U.S. X-37B Unmanned Space Craft Will Test Power Beaming From Orbit - Part 1 of 3 Parts.

U.S. X-37B Unmanned Space Craft Will Test Power Beaming From Orbit - Part 1 of 3 Parts.

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Caption: 
Boeing X-37B in faring prior to launch

Part 1 of 3 Parts
    The U.S. Air Force commissioned Boeing to construct the unmanned Boeing X-37 also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle in 1999. This space vehicle was about a quarter the size of the Space Shuttle. The project was transferred from NASA to the Department of Defense in 2004.
    In 2006, the Air Force announced that it would construct its own version of the X-37 called the X37B. The X-37B was designed to stay in orbit for up to 270 days. The stated purpose of the X-37B was to focus on “risk reduction, experimentation, and operational concept development for reusable space vehicle technologies, in support of long-term developmental space objectives”. The X-37B began its operational life in 2010. Most of the information about the X-37B and its missions is classified.
    An X-37B is scheduled to be launched on May 16th of this year from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.     The Department of Defense and the Space Force have provided minimal details of the mission in press releases. It will carry out missions to assess the effects of cosmic radiation and other space ‘effects” on seeds and material samples. It will also be carrying another payload in the form of an experimental system designed by the Naval Research Laboratory. This system will capture solar power and beam the energy back to Earth in the form of microwaves.
    The Naval Research Laboratory’s head of beamed power has stated that this system has huge implications for long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles. It will allow satellites to provide reliable power anywhere on Earth or even to other satellites in orbit. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been promoting this idea for the last year.
     In October 2019 the Navy gave a three-day demonstration of the latest Navy power-beaming capability at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the demonstration, the NRL transmitted a silent invisible beam of a two-kilowatt laser power almost a thousand feet.
     Research or military outposts in remote locations currently have to rely on low power solar systems or haul heavy generators and large amounts of fuel to their locations in order to operate. With the new power beaming system, the installation would only need to have a rectifying antenna also called a rectenna in order to capture useful energy in the form of microwaves beamed from overhead. Areas that have been ravished by natural disasters could use beamed energy to aid reconstruction long before tradition electrical infrastructure is rebuilt. It could even be used to power ships at sea.
     Dr. Paul Jaffe is an electronics engineer with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory who is leading the NRL’s research into power beaming. He predicts that power beaming with open up new frontiers in terms of long-endurance unmanned aircraft. He said, “If you have an electric drone that can fly more than an hour, you're doing pretty well. If we had a way to keep those drones and UAVs flying indefinitely, that would have really far-reaching implications. With power beaming, we have a path toward being able to do that.”
Please read Part 2 next.