This will be the eighth mission for the Boeing-built space plane, which has served as an on-orbit, experimental testbed for emerging technologies being developed by the Pentagon and NASA. The platform is designed to conduct long-duration flights before returning to Earth, where it can be repurposed for future missions. The system has already spent more than 4,200 days in space, according to Boeing.

Personnel are currently preparing the vehicle — which will fly with a service module — for another launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to a press release issued Monday. Mission partners for OTV-8, as the effort has been dubbed, include the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Silicon Valley-headquartered Defense Innovation Unit.

The service module will expand capacity for laser comms demonstrations, per the release.

Laser communications demos in low-Earth orbit “will contribute to more efficient and secure satellite communications in the future. The shorter wavelength of infrared light allows more data to be sent with each transmission,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman wrote in post on X.

“We’re also demoing the world’s highest performing quantum inertial sensor ever used in space. Bottom line: testing this tech will be helpful for navigation in contested environments where GPS may be degraded or denied,” he added.

According to Boeing’s press release, the mission will include the first in-space demonstration of a “strategic grade” quantum inertial sensor.

“OTV 8’s quantum inertial sensor demonstration is a welcome step forward for the operational resilience of Guardians in space,” Space Delta 9 Commander Col. Ramsey Hom said in a statement. “Whether navigating beyond Earth-based orbits in cis-lunar space or operating in GPS-denied environments, quantum inertial sensing allows for robust navigation capabilities where GPS navigation is not possible. Ultimately, this technology contributes significantly to our thrust within the Fifth Space Operations Squadron and across the Space Force guaranteeing movement and maneuverability even in GPS-denied environments.”

The launch date is targeted for Aug. 21, according to Saltzman.

During the space plane’s most recent mission, which started in 2023 and wrapped up earlier this year, efforts included experimenting with operating in new orbital regimes, testing space domain awareness technologies and investigating radiation effects, according to officials.

For the mission before that, the X-37B spent a whopping 908 days in orbit.

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The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket hoisted the unmanned space plane into orbit Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after unspecified ground equipment issues and bad weather forced the company to push back the launch, which was originally scheduled for Dec. 7.

Although details about the latest mission have been largely kept behind closed doors, the Space Force said in November that some tests will include “operating in new orbital regimes, experimenting with space domain awareness technologies and investigating the radiation effects to NASA materials.”

“This was a very important mission and our teams worked shoulder-to-shoulder to ensure a successful launch,” Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, commander of Space Launch Delta 45, said in a statement. “Our national security space missions are the most stressing within our launch portfolio, and we have multiple world class organizations that come together to make the magic happen.”

First launched in 2010, the Boeing-made X-37B has served as an on-orbit, experimental testbed for novel technologies being developed by the Pentagon and NASA across six missions. The reusable space plane is able to conduct demonstrations during its years-long flights before landing back on Earth, where it can be repurposed for future missions.

Its most recent flight lasted 908 days, after which it returned to Earth in November 2022.

“The technological advancements we’re driving on X-37B will benefit the broader space community, especially as we see increased interest in space sustainability,” Michelle Parker, Boeing’s vice president of space mission systems, said in a statement. “We are pushing innovation and capability that will influence the next generation of spacecraft.”

Thursday’s launch marks the first time an X-37B has been carried to space by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket — an ultra powerful launch vehicle that could lift the military plane into higher orbital regimes than previous flights. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 system was used for the X-37B’s sixth mission, while the previous five leveraged the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket.

Previous X-37B flights have tested space-to-ground solar energy technology developed by the Naval Research Laboratory and how organic materials react to exposure in space over long periods of time.

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The 10-Year Lunar Architecture, or LunA-10, capability study aims to define the analytical frameworks for an infrastructure that will be key to laying the foundations for a future self-sustaining lunar economy. The goal of the study is to better understand what a moon-based economy could look like, and therefore what investments will be needed to realize it.

Over the next seven months, DARPA and companies chosen to participate in the study will work together to design new integrated solutions for a moon-based economy — including “lunar power; mining and commercial in-situ resource utilization; communications, navigation, and timing; transit, mobility, and logistics; and construction and robotics,” according to an agency press release.

The vendors chosen range from traditional government contractors to smaller start-up companies. They include Blue Origin, CisLunar Industries, Crescent Space Services, Fibertek, Inc., Firefly Aerospace, GITAI, Helios, Honeybee Robotics, ICON, Nokia of America, Northrop Grumman, Redwire Corporation, Sierra Space and SpaceX.

“LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years,” Michael Nayak, program manager for DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said in a statement. “LunA-10 performers include companies both big and small, domestic and international, each of which brought a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure. We’re excited to get started and to share results with the lunar community at large.”

The study will conclude in June 2024, and the agency plans to publish an analytical framework with defined infrastructure and a plan for scaling the systems. Before that, participants will have the opportunity to brief the lunar community on their work at the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) Spring Meeting in April 2024, a DARPA press release stated.

According to a presolicitation released in August, the study will focus on three thrust areas — energy, communications and mobility — in addition to other relevant concepts for lunar infrastructure.

Notably, the study focuses on “multi-service” infrastructure — meaning a single infrastructure node that could perform more than one function. In an interview with DefenseScoop in August, Nayak explained that this helps address some of the logistical challenges of getting to the moon.

The United States, other nations and the commercial space industry have been working to return to the moon to further study it and potentially stand up a lunar economy. A number of government programs are currently underway — from NASA’s Artemis program to DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) nuclear thermal rocket engine — that aim to establish a regular human presence on the moon before the end of the decade.

LunA-10 won’t fund the development or fielding of the technologies identified in the study, but instead serve as a vehicle for industry collaboration. The study is strictly tailored to capabilities for commercial and economic use, and DARPA anticipates that the study will not be applicable for military applications.

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A new NASA director of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) research will drive a lot of the work — but immediate details about this envisioned, tech-heavy collaboration between the two agencies remain mostly unclear.

Last year, the space agency revealed plans to commission a team of 16 executives and technology experts to help determine how data collected by government, commercial and other sources can be analyzed to make sense of reports of potential UAP encounters that might threaten U.S. security. That team’s highly anticipated final report was published on Thursday, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson hosted a press briefing with a panel of experts at the agency’s headquarters to unveil it.

On the heels of the review’s release, personnel from both NASA and the Defense Department are being tight-lipped about what their partnership on UAPs will look like — even as they continue to commit to deeper government transparency on this historically stigmatized topic.

“NASA has taken — for the first time — concrete action to seriously look into UAP, and this independent study team is exactly that. It’s independent. They work to develop recommendations about how NASA could better examine them from a scientific perspective — and the top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn,” Nelson explained.  

“So, while today is a significant step for NASA, it’s certainly not our final step. And we’re going to share more with you,” he added.

The U.S. government has a long and complicated history with UAP — but demands from Congress and the public for transparency have intensified in recent years, particularly in response to more and more seemingly unexplainable objects detected by sensors and observed by commercial, government and military pilots.

Nelson, who previously served in Congress in the 1970s and from 2001 to 2019, noted that in his “previous life in the Senate, [he] was privy to talk to the Navy pilots,” and saw then-classified media for military assets that captured possible UAP. 

While many of DOD’s UAP-related records are still classified for reasons the department associates with operational security, Nelson and the panel of experts emphasized that NASA is prioritizing unclassified data in its work so that personnel and the public can speak openly about it. 

“We are going to continue our search from a scientific point of view. If those other agencies continue their search, we’re going to be glad to join in — but our stuff is going to be open,” Nelson said. 

The administrator was joined by NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Associate Administrator Nicola Fox, the directorate’s Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for Research Dan Evans, and the chair of NASA’s UAP independent study team David Spergel. During the one-hour briefing, the group spotlighted some findings of the final report and roadmap, and answered some follow-up questions from reporters.

Broadly, the report recommends a number of ways in which NASA should assist the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s (AARO) ongoing, congressionally mandated responsibilities and potentially take on some new ones of its own. 

“[DOD’s] primary mission is not investigating the universe, but protecting it,” Spergel told DefenseScoop after the briefing. 

Meanwhile, NASA “with its extensive expertise in these domains and global reputation for scientific openness — is in an excellent position to contribute to UAP studies within the broader whole-of-government framework led by” AARO, he and the expert team he led wrote in their new report. 

The panel suggests that the space agency takes on an “essential role within that framework” and leverages “its core capabilities and expertise to determine whether it should take a leading or supporting role in implementing a given recommendation.”

Among other findings, the report reveals that the U.S. presently does not have a standardized federal system for making civilian UAP reports.

“While AARO is establishing a systematic mechanism for military and intelligence community UAP reports, current FAA guidelines instruct citizens wanting to report UAP to contact local law enforcement or one or more non-governmental organizations. As a result, the collection of data is sparse, unsystematic, and lacks any curation or vetting protocols. NASA should play a vital role by assisting AARO in its development of this federal system,” officials wrote. 

Last month, AARO launched the first iteration of a new website to share information with the public. It’s meant to eventually be DOD’s one-stop-shop on UAP, and allow military and government pilots, and federal contractors, to report relevant observances. 

At the Pentagon’s press briefing on Thursday, Sabrina Singh, deputy press secretary, declined to share any further information about the making and deployment of a federal system for civilian reporting of UAP in relation to the new site or how the department might look to NASA for support.    

Still, in its new report, NASA’s independent study team argues that right now, “UAP analysis is more limited by the quality of data than by the availability of techniques.” So, obtaining more and higher quality data should be a top government priority.

Then, advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can be applied to identify UAP in vast, complex datasets.  

“Once AARO and other agencies, including NASA, accumulate an extensive and well-curated catalog of baseline data, these can be used to train neural networks so that they can characterize deviations from normal. The panel finds that standard techniques that are routinely applied in astronomy, particle physics, and other areas of science can be adapted for these analyses,” according to the report. 

With the release of this report, Nelson also announced that the agency is appointing a new director of UAP Research to centralize communications and leverage its enterprise-wide data, AI and other resources to enable this overarching, national UAP endeavor. 

In response to DefenseScoop’s questions regarding the next steps for cooperation with AARO and the secure mechanisms the NASA team is using for information-sharing, Fox simply responded: “On the immediate actions, we’ve established our director of UAP research and they’re working across the whole-of-government, they’re working very closely with AARO. They are a sort of central point for all of the collaboration.”

She and other panelists declined to name that new official then, citing previous threats and online trolling that the independent study team endured while conducting its assessment. But in an apparent change of heart late on Thursday, a NASA spokesperson alerted DefenseScoop that the agency opted to identify the official as Mark McInerney.

Previously, McInerney “served as NASA’s liaison to the Department of Defense covering limited UAP activities for the agency,” states a press release that was updated Thursday afternoon. DefenseScoop reported on that engagement earlier this year.

“One of AARO’s best partners in the review of the scientific data and collection capabilities surrounding UAPs has been NASA. Our partnership was solidified by the inclusion of a NASA liaison to join AARO’s science and technology group, who has helped expand AARO’s reach into the academic and scientific communities,” Pentagon Spokesperson Eric Pahon told DefenseScoop on Thursday. 

“NASA plays a vital role in the whole-of-government approach to understanding the types of data requirements, collection capabilities, and scientific methodologies applicable to UAP research. AARO has supported NASA’s Independent Study team throughout their process, and fully supports NASA’s findings and recommendations,” Pahon said. 

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The 10-Year Lunar Architecture, or LunA-10, capability review aims to define the analytical frameworks for an infrastructure that will be key in laying the foundations for a future self-sustaining lunar economy. By understanding what infrastructure is needed, as well as the desired end-state, DARPA hopes the LunA-10 assessment can help drive current investments in moon-based economies, said Michael Nayak, program manager for DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office.

“We care about this lunar economy of the future, and we’re getting there,” Nayak said in an interview with DefenseScoop on Tuesday. “There’s some big leaps that have been made in commercial investment. But are there perhaps some tipping points that can really push us in the near term — so the next 10-years — towards the idea of a lunar infrastructure?”

Nayak described the seven-month study as “fast and furious.” According to a presolicitation published on Sam.gov on Tuesday, DARPA is looking to bring together companies from the lunar services commercial industry that have ideas for how infrastructure technology can be delivered to and operated on the moon. The study will not fund specific tech development or transportation to the moon, it noted.

LunA-10 is focusing exclusively on “multi-service” infrastructure — meaning a single infrastructure node could perform more than one function — as a way to address logistical challenges to getting to the moon, Nayak said. As an example, that could entail fusing a power station, communications and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities onto a single node, he explained. 

“Let’s say I’m using an optical wavelength to transfer power [via] power beaming. If I’m going to that trouble, can I also just code onto that beam a navigation waveform so now I can tell you where you are with reference to me?” he said. “Now, let me encode communications waveforms onto it so I can get back telemetry [and] provide you telemetry.”

Nayak added that the study is a way to bring together companies from the commercial space industry that are individually concentrating on developing one specific function and foster collaboration between them. 

“We’re at this moment where there are so many companies that are doing amazing things without the government’s assistance, and that’s awesome,” he said. “But where is it going? And can we help figure out what the stumbling blocks are ahead and then start working on technical solutions now that could solve these problems in the future?”

The United States and other nations, as well as the commercial industry, have grown increasingly interested in returning to the moon and creating a lunar economy. NASA’s Artemis program aims to establish a regular human presence on the moon before the end of the decade, and the organization released its own plan in April to create an architecture there.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has also begun looking towards the moon. DARPA and NASA recently tapped Lockheed Martin to build and test the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) nuclear thermal rocket engine.

However, Nayak emphasized that the LunA-10 study is specifically catered to commercial and economic use and that officials anticipate no military uses with the technology they’re developing. He added that the program is in line with NASA’s goals for the Artemis Accords, which establish an international framework for the civil exploration and peaceful use of the moon and other planets in outer space.

LunA-10 is looking into three thrust areas — energy, communications and mobility — as well as other relevant concepts. When understanding the possibilities of a lunar economy, DARPA wanted to focus on foundational elements first that could eventually be scaled, Nayak said.

Power and energy are obvious necessities for sustaining economic activity on the moon, but can be challenging when considering some of the energy-deficient places on the moon like the lunar south pole, he said. DARPA’s presolicitation notes that the agency is specifically interested in wireless power beaming infrastructure and excludes surface nuclear fission.

The study is also looking into surface-to-surface and surface-to-lunar orbit communications, as well as communications to and from the Earth and the moon, according to the presolicitation.

“This is the next 10 years that we’re looking at, and so there’s probably not a lot of automation, there’s probably not a lot of people or equipment or logistics that have been established,” Nayak said. “Whatever we field on the moon, whatever commercial services are just starting to get operating, they need to report back on how they’re doing, what the problems are and how they are monetizing.”

The third focus area, mobility, isn’t considered an immediate problem but it’s one that DARPA wants to tackle early on, Nayak noted. It will look into how equipment sent to the moon on heavy-lift rockets is dispersed across its surface so that it isn’t anchored to its landing site forever. 

“We want more exploration, we want more range, we want to go over the horizon to the next crater. [But] how do I move all of that stuff? What are the logistics of mobility? And so, moving from that central node outward I think is a key. That’s where we go from the foundational lunar economy,” he explained.

DARPA is asking companies to submit a three-page abstract by Sept. 6, followed by a 10-page white paper and technical presentation by Sept. 26 if requested by the agency. DARPA will announce the firms that were chosen to participate in LunA-10 during the meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) in October in Pittsburgh.

The study will conclude in June 2024, and DARPA hopes to publish an analytical framework with a defined infrastructure and plan for system scaling. Throughout the review, the industry team will routinely meet with NASA for discussion and feedback, Nayak said.

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Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO’s first-ever chief, revealed the moves during NASA’s highly anticipated, inaugural UAP Independent Study Team meeting on Wednesday.

“One of the first things that we’re doing” is assessing all existing sensors and associated data its privy to — from the Department of Defense, intelligence community, commercial sector, NASA and elsewhere — against typical UAP target objects, Kirkpatrick explained. 

“Given what we’ve got so far, that is going to be an important first step to understanding which sensors are going to be relevant. From there we are augmenting with dedicated sensors that we’ve purpose-built and designed to detect, track and characterize those particular objects. We will keep putting those out in very select areas for surveillance purposes,” he added.

His team is working to better calibrate existing U.S. and allies’ platforms to better spot and monitor unidentified anomalous phenomena. Just days ago, Kirkpatrick met with members of the “Five Eyes” alliance — made up of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand — to establish processes for UAP data-sharing and asset calibration that can better inform investigations. 

AARO is also working with universities to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to its data holdings and target searches. Among other activities, Kirkpatrick said his office is conducting a new “pattern of life analysis.”

“This is essentially baselining what is normal. I have all these hotspot areas — but we only have hotspot areas because that’s when the reports come in from the operators that are operating at that time. They don’t operate all the time. So to have a 24/7 collection monitoring campaign in some of these areas for three months at a time is going to be necessary in order to measure out what is normal. Then I’ll know what is not normal when we have additional things that come through those spaces — and that includes space and maritime,” Kirkpatrick said

Broadly, NASA’s study explores how data captured by government, commercial and other sources can be studied to shed light on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Officials at the public meeting confirmed plans to officially publish their overarching work in late July.

The Pentagon’s ARRO is separately working to better characterize, understand, attribute and help the department respond to UAP — specifically with priority given to reports by government personnel in or near areas of national security importance. It has a number of future deliverables mandated by Congress in the next several years. 

“While NASA is evaluating unclassified data sources for its study, AARO’s dataset includes classified material with a focus on national security areas. However, all of this data — collectively — is critical to understanding the nature and origin of UAP,” Kirkpatrick said in his presentation on Wednesday. 

Beyond “unique capabilities, world class scientists, and a wealth of academic and research linkages,” he noted, the space agency “also has access to Earth-sensing satellites, radiological sensors, tools for gravitational wave and geomagnetic detection, and means of analyzing crowd-sourced data that may assist AARO and NASA in their UAP efforts.”

AARO was mandated by the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act and established that same year. Pressure from the public and Congress for explanations of imagery demonstrating U.S. military pilots’ interactions with baffling objects detected across multiple domains, ultimately led to its establishment.

In October 2022, NASA unveiled a team of 16 outside experts studying “observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or as known natural phenomena.”

As AARO’s director, Kirkpatrick serves as a non-voting participant of the NASA independent study team. He’s been providing input and guidance since the study kicked off last year.

“The NASA team is using only unclassified data for its UAP study and is not drawing on classified data. However, AARO has been sharing classified data and information with the cleared members of the study panel. Though NASA and AARO are taking on different aspects of the UAP problem set, those efforts are very much complementary,” Pentagon Spokesperson Sue Gough told DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

During a press briefing after the public meeting on Wednesday, Dan Evans — assistant deputy associate administrator for research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate — told DefenseScoop that his agency sees “true benefit to this team working solely on unclassified data, because when you restrict yourself to those types of data, you can collaborate freely with academia, with industry and with international partners.”

Evans further confirmed to DefenseScoop that Mark McInerney — who he described as a “tremendous expert on large-scale curation of data and an employee of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who really runs the show when it comes to our Earth observing assets” — is the NASA official recently tapped to embed with AARO.

“Individuals such as [McInerney] can translate into both domains between unclassified and classified data,” Evans said. 

Back in April, Kirkpatrick testified to Congress about AARO’s work and progress made from its inception up to that point. On Wednesday during the NASA-led briefing, he shed light on how his team’s research continues to evolve.

“At the time of my open hearing, we were at 650 cases-ish. We are now at over 800. We are putting together our annual report, which will be due Aug. 1 to the Hill, and there will be an unclassified version as there always has been. We will have those updated numbers at that time,” Kirkpatrick explained. 

The “jump” in new reports stems from AARO recently integrating data from the Federal Aviation Administration into its arsenal.

“We’re going to try to do a little more fidelity on some of the analytics we report out, but the numbers I would say that we see are possibly really anomalous or less than single-digit percentages of that total database,” Kirkpatrick told the NASA experts.

AARO is generating a “robust scientific plan” about its efforts for Congress, which he said McInerney will fundamentally help inform. 

Kirkpatrick also supplied eight recommendations that the Defense Department would like to see the space agency incorporate into its own UAP-resolving pursuits (see chart below). 

.

He suggested NASA take the lead on the government’s crowd-sourced metadata evaluations, lead a comprehensive review of archive UAP data, examine the use of large-scale scientific instruments for such discoveries — and more. 

Notably, during the meeting and follow-on press briefing, DOD and NASA officials also reflected on the online trolling and hostile public responses they are steadily receiving for participating in the government’s UFO projects.

“The stigma has improved significantly over the years since the Navy first took this on, some years ago. It is not gone — and in fact, I would argue the stigma exists inside the leadership of all of our buildings, wherever that is. My team and I have also been subjected to lots of harassment, especially coming out of my last [congressional] hearing because people don’t understand the scientific method and why we have to do the things we have to do,” Kirkpatrick said. “Where can NASA help? I made that recommendation that NASA should lead the scientific discourse. We need to elevate this conversation. We need to have this conversation in an open environment like this where we aren’t going to get harassed.”

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But the agencies are currently being tight-lipped about exactly who from the Pentagon attended.

In October, a team of 16 executives and experts commissioned by NASA launched a 9-month, independent study to explore how different types of data from public and private sensors and other means can be collected and reviewed to make sense of seemingly unexplainable UAP-type happenings that could threaten national security — and hopefully reveal new insights about the objects’ origins. 

When their study concludes, that team will release a report to the public and recommend a new roadmap for potential future NASA-led UAP data analyses. Facts are being gathered through a series of meetings — including the summit held by NASA last Thursday and Friday — that will ultimately inform future government UAP investigations.

“These meetings are designed for the study team to prepare and gather facts from relevant experts to identify what data — from civilian government entities, commercial data and data from other sources — can potentially be analyzed,” a NASA spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

“The team is focusing on identifying how NASA can use the data available and the tools of science to move our understanding of UAP forward,” they added.

Following mounting congressional and public pressure for more transparency in recent years, NASA, DOD and other federal entities are now instituting new reporting mechanisms and sharing updates and fresh details about their officials’ encounters with perplexing phenomena, in all domains. Mandated by Congress, the Pentagon disseminated an annual review last month, for example, asserting that military aviators and other DOD members have cataloged more than 500 UAP reports that its new All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is now investigating.

Though they would not get into specifics, the NASA spokesperson told DefenseScoop that “representatives from [the FAA and the DOD] were present as part of the study team and experts who participated” at the summit the space agency held.

Multiple officials within the Pentagon’s press office did not respond to repeated requests from DefenseScoop for more information about its staff’s participation in the summit. 

NASA’s spokesperson said the agency’s “independent study team will be meeting with experts periodically over the next nine months through mid-2023” but did not detail the planned cadence of those engagements. 

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This expansion in terminology matches a move first made by the Pentagon recently to explicitly acknowledge its leaders’ intent to openly investigate and record a wider range of perplexing objects observed (or caught on sensors) near its personnel and assets, doing things that are seemingly impossible to do with contemporary technologies.

“To be consistent with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), NASA will be calling UAP ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’ instead of ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,’” Katherine Rohloff, press secretary for the space agency’s Science Mission Directorate, told DefenseScoop on Thursday.

Still, she noted, “NASA’s UAP independent study will be largely focused on aerial phenomena.”

That independent study kicked off in October and is expected to unfold over the course of about nine months. Broadly, NASA is commissioning a team of 16 executives and experts to pinpoint how data captured by government, commercial and other sources can be analyzed to ultimately make sense of bizarre UAP-associated happenings that could threaten national security — and shed light on their origins.

With sights set on enabling data and other science and technology tools to advance humans’ understanding on a historically sticky topic, that independent cadre of experts will apply their learnings to recommend a roadmap for potential UAP data analysis that NASA can steer down the line.

The agency expects to release a full report on the findings from the investigation — and host a public meeting in the late Spring 2023 timeframe — where the UAP Independent Study Team will discuss the results.

While NASA is pursuing this comprehensive deep-dive on UAPs for its own science and air safety purposes, officials plan to share learnings with other government entities, including DOD’s new All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

During a press briefing on Tuesday — days after the DOD announced its new definition for “UAP,” but before NASA officially changed its description for the acronym — Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told DefenseScoop that, at the time, he was not concerned the two agencies’ lack of common language for the term would cause challenges with information- and data-sharing on the topic, which both organizations are prioritizing in their overarching efforts.

“I think the important thing is, looking at the bigger picture, ensuring that we’re all working towards common objectives through interagency dialogues and — and discussions, which I would fully expect will happen in this case going forward,” Ryder said. “We have a very close working relationship with the — in the Department of Defense, with NASA — and I have no reason to think that that will change anytime soon.”

On Thursday, NASA updated a press release originally published in October, to reflect that it now means “anomalous” phenomena when it refers to “UAP.”

Both the space and defense agencies’ updates, and attempts to ensure more transparency and less taboo around the UFO topic, follow years of mounting pressure from the public and Congress. 

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Few operational spaceplanes exist at this point, and the Pentagon has been tight-lipped regarding its own Boeing-built, X-37B robotic test vehicle over the years. Details about associated payloads are largely classified. 

Though somewhat similar and often compared to NASA’s Space Shuttle — which is no longer in service — the X-37B is smaller and isn’t intended to carry humans. Equipped with a payload bay that is the size of a pickup truck, it is instead designed to enable unmanned, on-orbit experiments and technology demonstrations — and to return data and research objects back to scientists and engineers on Earth for deeper inspection and analysis.

During its latest, recently concluded mission, the Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-6 (OTV-6) assisted multiple government-led studies, including for NASA, the Naval Research Laboratory and Air Force Academy. For the first time, it transported a service module attached to its rear “that allowed us to host more experiments than ever before,” Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, X-37B program director in the Department of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, said in a statement.

“From what we know, this mission was significant because it is the longest ever for the X-37B and it carried the most payloads to orbit. But it is entirely possible there are other milestones achieved by this mission that the Space Force is not telling us about,” Todd Harrison, non-resident senior associate for the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and managing director of Metrea Strategic Insights, told DefenseScoop on Monday.

Christopher Stone, senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, told DefenseScoop on Monday that he’s “very excited to see this program continue under the leadership of the Space Force following its handoff from the Air Force.”

The Pentagon’s primary use for the X-37B seems to be moving experimental payloads into orbit to test new and emerging space technologies — at least that’s a conclusion that could be drawn “from what is publicly known,” Harrison told DefenseScoop.

The platform “appears to have significant propulsion capabilities, so it can change its orbit or, in theory, boost the orbit of other satellites,” he noted. Such technology could enable the military to move low-flying satellites to higher orbits so they stay aloft longer, effectively prolonging their usability. 

“It is also possible that the X-37B may have some robotic capabilities that would allow it to perform repairs or upgrade satellites on orbit, like the Space Shuttle did for the Hubble Space Telescope, but this is just speculation,” Harrison said.

He noted that this X-37B technology is very similar to China’s efforts to test a reusable spaceplane, which caused “a bit of an uproar” last year in the U.S. national security community. Some observers at the time referred to the Chinese tech as an “orbital bombardment system.”

“The X-37B is a hypersonic glide vehicle, and its mere existence could be cause for concern for our adversaries — just as any developments our adversaries make in hypersonic flight is of concern for us,” Harrison said.

The latest X-37B mission was aimed at pushing the boundaries of space-based military experimentation and tech evaluations.

“Aside from the record-setting length of the flight and precision landing at Kennedy Space Center, one of the biggest advances this flight demonstrated was a tech demonstration of a space-based solar power transmission system for Naval Research Laboratory,” the Mitchell Institute’s Stone noted.

He was referring to the NRL’s Photovoltaic Radio-Frequency Antenna Module (PRAM) that the spaceplane hosted, which tapped solar rays outside of Earth’s atmosphere and sought to transmit power to the ground in the form of radio frequency microwave energy.

Stone, who previously served as an Air Force space operations officer and presidential appointee in the Defense secretary’s space policy office, told DefenseScoop that this module was “set to analyze the antenna’s energy conversion process from solar energy to a beam to send to Earth.” 

The most recent flight could have major implications for the execution of the new National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, especially with regards to climate initiatives and energy supplies for forward-deployed forces, he said. 

“As far as I know, this is the first time a space solar power demo has been conducted in space. From what I am hearing it was successful and, if operationalized, could aid the current National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy efforts towards finding alternative, clean sources of energy to beam to warfighters deployed worldwide” — and particularly in remote areas, Stone added. 

The PRAM is roughly the size of a pizza box, and was attached to the military’s X-37B when it took off for its latest mission in May 2020. 

“Given the Chinese are also working vigorously on such a space energy beaming system as well, this could give the U.S. an edge in fielding such a system, should one be approved. At the very least, space qualifying this particular piece of the system is a huge step forward for many who have been working on such concepts for decades,” Stone said.

Supporting another Defense Department-led effort, the OTV-6 mission also delivered the Air Force Academy’s Falcon-SAT-8 into orbit. To Stone, that work is “huge” from an educational standpoint for future Space Force guardians.

“This provides training in both design and operations of spacecraft that will give these cadets valuable experience before they commission. That satellite remains in orbit, from what I have heard, for the cadets to learn about space mission operations hands-on,” he said.

Among NASA experiments the recent mission enabled was an investigation into the effects of long-duration space exposure on seeds, to inform future crop production that could sustain permanently inhabited bases in space — something the U.S. government envisions down the line.

And NASA’s Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space (METIS-2) experiment built on other efforts to collect data for scientists to assess and later use to simulate ways that space settings can impact thermal control coatings, printed electronic materials, and candidate radiation shielding materials. 

Future missions

Experts who spoke to DefenseScoop pointed out that the X-37B might be many things, but it is notably both an experiment — and an experiment carrier — for the government to mature capabilities like those mentioned above.

“Even its own flight profiles have shown that it is possible to have autonomous orbital flight, re-entry, and landings” at locations in California and Florida, Stone said.

“Having the ability to demonstrate technologies in space, expose them to the space environment for long periods of time, and getting them space-rated from a technology readiness level is a very important military mission. That is vital to getting systems approved and in space for use by the Space Force and the other services. Some of the technologies that have been tested include such things as advanced materials such as NASA’s METIS-2 that sought to learn how space environment impacts these materials,” he added.

Though he has not yet heard “when the next mission will fly,” Stone said “they have flown their fleet fairly frequently, so I would not doubt that we will see another one fly soon.”

A Space Force Spokesperson told DefenseScoop on Monday that “launch dates and details of future missions will be released as they become available.”

“The X-37B maintains a flexible launch capability in order to accommodate experimental and mission objectives,” the spokesperson noted.

The platform could potentially serve as a space weapon in the future if that’s what the Pentagon wanted it to do, experts say. Defense officials increasingly view space as a warfighting domain where the United States will have to compete with advanced adversaries such as China.

“One could argue that any spacecraft could be used as an offensive weapon, but just because something can be used as a weapon does not mean it is intended to be used as a weapon or would even be effective if used offensively,” Harrison noted. “From what we can tell based on its orbital track and history of use, it does not appear to have any offensive roles or missions — nor does it appear to be ideally suited for an offensive role.”

In his view, if the “military wanted an offensive capability on orbit, it would not need to go through the extra expense and complexity of also making it a reusable spaceplane.” 

Earlier deployments and tests of Soviet Union-controlled satellites with offensive capabilities in the 1960s “looked nothing like this,” he noted. 

“It is possible that some of the technologies being tested on the X-37B could be for offensive or defensive counterspace missions, but the U.S. military has never indicated that this is the case,” Harrison said.

The post What we know about the Pentagon’s mysterious X-37B spaceplane and its record-setting mission appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Through the newly unveiled Washington Metropolitan Quantum Network Research Consortium (DC-QNet), eight federal entities will contribute to a host of scientific and technical pursuits necessary to implement a functional quantum network for the U.S. government and Department of Defense.

Quantum information science (QIS) is a buzzy, emerging field that the U.S. government and its competitors have been increasingly prioritizing. The discipline seeks to apply phenomena associated with quantum mechanics to process and transmit information. Quantum networks are elements of QIS envisioned to one day provide the ability to securely distribute and share data among quantum computers, clusters of quantum sensors and other devices.

Agencies involved in DC-QNet include the Army Research Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory, Naval Observatory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Security Agency (NSA) and NASA. The Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific and Air Force Research Laboratory are also involved as out-of-region affiliates.

“This is an example of [federal] organizations with different missions working together on common scientific challenges that benefit all of their missions,” DC-QNet Executive Director Gerald Borsuk told FedScoop on Wednesday. “The synergism of their contributions will enable advances that none of them separately could achieve in an efficient manner.”

Principal investigators from the various government components will each steer tasks aligned with specific technical goals. Pursuits will include advancing metrology needed to operate a quantum network, infrastructure development, network simulation, and the implementation of novel capabilities and devices to enable this technology.

The door might later be opened to other organizations to participate in the initiative, Borsuk told FedScoop.

“Once the basic science and network configuration is established and experimental proof of key components and concepts are performed, other organizations including from [the public and private sectors and academia] may be given the opportunity to conduct innovative experiments on the DC-QNet,” he said.

Quantum networks will likely be essential to state-of-the-art, secure communications and computing enhancements in the decades to come, he noted. To work, they lean on the exploitation of quantum-entangled particles, such as photons, to move information in the form of qubits — the basic unit of information in QIS technologies. 

Quantum entanglement refers to a unique property of atomic and subatomic particles that isn’t completely explained by classical physics. It’s essentially the relationship between such tiny particles where the quantum state of each can’t be described independently of the state of the others — even though they are physically apart.

“The successful demonstration of controlled quantum entanglement distribution amongst three physically separated nodes represents a key outcome” the DC-QNet aims to achieve, noted Borsuk, who also serves as the associate director of research for the Naval Research Lab’s Systems Directorate.

The consortium’s roots

Interest in quantum networking has blossomed in recent years, Borsuk said.

In February 2020, the Energy Department hosted a quantum networking workshop in its New York City offices, which many scientists and engineers attended — including Borsuk.

Shortly thereafter, it came to light at a Naval Research Lab meeting that dark fiber — or fiber not being used for traditional telecommunications and with no optical-electronic-optical interfaces — connected several government laboratories that had ongoing research in QIS, and specifically quantum networking. Those discussions eventually led to a virtual workshop in November 2020 organized by NIST.  

“The workshop included participation by all the U.S. government laboratories performing quantum research in the Washington Metro area,” Borsuk noted.

Through the workshop, the experts involved defined their areas of mutual research interest that could be key to implementing a quantum network. 

“Given the excitement around these activities, the executive technical leadership of these organizations started meeting monthly, and DC-QNet evolved into the current organization,” Borsuk said.

The post DC-QNet consortium director shares new details about plans for quantum network testbed appeared first on DefenseScoop.