Pentagon's mysterious spacecraft punches above its weight
The US Air Force is cagey when it comes to what exactly its X-37B droneship does but it's clear the small craft is scoping the skies
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IN the Pentagon's vast arsenal there is little quite like it: a super-secret space drone that looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle, but orbits the Earth for months, even years, at a time. Doing what? The Air Force won't say.
On the tarmac, the X-37B, as it is called, looks tiny, standing not much taller than a person. Its wingspan measures less than 4.5 metres and it weighs in at just 4,989 kilograms. But over the course of six flights, it has proved to be a rugged little robotic spacecraft, spending a total of nearly six years, probing the hard environment of the high frontier.
On Thursday, after a successful morning launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the X-37B headed yet again to the vital real estate known as low Earth orbit, home to the International Space Station and all sorts of military and commercial satellites. The mission is slated to last 270 days, but the Air Force warned in a statement that "the actual duration depends on test objectives, on-orbit vehicle performance and conditions at the landing facility." In other words, there's no telling how long the thing will be up there.
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