NASA Flight Tests Reusable System
NASA on Wednesday completed the first in a series of free-flights of the unmanned X-40A to test systems for a reusable spacecraft that will be launched aboard the space shuttle but return to Earth independently like an airplane.
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EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) - An Army Chinook helicopter carried the prototype to 15,000 feet above the Mojave Desert before releasing it to glide to a successful landing 74 seconds later. The stubby-winged craft reached speeds approaching 200 mph before touching down.
``It made an autonomous landing, right on the center line, apparently perfect,' said Alan Brown, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Dryden Flight Research Center.
The 22-foot-long X-40A, built by The Boeing Co.'s Phantom Works, is an 85 percent scale model of the X-37, which NASA hopes will fly two missions aboard the shuttle in 2003.
The X-40A, on loan from the Air Force, is being used to test the shape, guidance and other systems for the X-37.
Over the next year, NASA will conduct as many as six more flight tests of the X-40A, which before Wednesday had flown just once, in 1998 at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M.
Earlier this month, NASA canceled two projects in its X-plane program, the X-33, envisioned as a protoype for a space shuttle replacement, and the X-34, which would be launched from modified aircraft on suborbital flights.
Other than the X-37, NASA is developing the X-38, which international space station crew members would use to return to Earth in case of emergency.
``It made an autonomous landing, right on the center line, apparently perfect,' said Alan Brown, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Dryden Flight Research Center.
The 22-foot-long X-40A, built by The Boeing Co.'s Phantom Works, is an 85 percent scale model of the X-37, which NASA hopes will fly two missions aboard the shuttle in 2003.
The X-40A, on loan from the Air Force, is being used to test the shape, guidance and other systems for the X-37.
Over the next year, NASA will conduct as many as six more flight tests of the X-40A, which before Wednesday had flown just once, in 1998 at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M.
Earlier this month, NASA canceled two projects in its X-plane program, the X-33, envisioned as a protoype for a space shuttle replacement, and the X-34, which would be launched from modified aircraft on suborbital flights.
Other than the X-37, NASA is developing the X-38, which international space station crew members would use to return to Earth in case of emergency.
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