Space lifeboat soars in test flight

The X-38 touches down after a test flight on Tuesday

By Richard Stenger
CNN

(CNN) -- The prototype of a space station escape capsule glided to a safe landing after a soaring free flight on Tuesday, NASA engineers said.

The unmanned X-38 craft was dropped from a B-52 airplane at an altitude of almost 40,000 feet, then coasted over the California desert and touched down at Edwards Air Force Base.

The experimental NASA plane is being used to test technologies for a planned emergency escape from the international space station. The 13-minute excursion Tuesday was the seventh in a continuing series of free flight tests.

RESOURCES Message Board: Space exploration

"It was an outstanding flight, probably the best one we had," said Alan Brown, spokesperson for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. "It went off without a hitch."

An X-38 during an earlier test flight in July, 1999

Unlike the space shuttle, the X-38 flies without wings. Instead, it uses the largest parachute ever constructed, with a span of 143 feet and a total surface area of 7,500 square feet.

NASA plans more tests on the X-38, leading to a space test flight in several years when an unmanned vehicle now under construction at the Johnson Space Center will be released in orbit by the space shuttle to fly back to Earth.

Until the X-38 is in place on the space station, Russia will provide a Soyuz space capsule to act as a crew-return vehicle for astronauts.