"Will The Pentagon’s Secret Space Plane Ever Return to Earth?" Topic
5 Posts
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Tango01 | 07 Apr 2014 10:51 p.m. PST |
"The Air Force's secret space plane has been up in orbit for nearly 500 days—a space endurance record. But nearly a year and a half into the mission, the Pentagon still won't say what the X-37B is doing up there, or when it might come back. The U.S. Air Force boosted the robotic X-37B atop the nose of an Atlas-5 rocket in December 2012. Since then it's orbited the Earth thousands of times, overflying such interesting places as North Korea and Iran. Similar to the Space Shuttle in appearance, the diminutive X-37B is about a quarter the size of the old shuttles. But there are major differences. Lacking a crew, the spacecraft has no cockpit windows. The X-37B has a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed
" Full article here. link Amicalement Armand |
altfritz | 08 Apr 2014 4:49 a.m. PST |
They don't want to admit that they lost control of it shortly after takeoff. |
Legion 4 | 08 Apr 2014 7:34 a.m. PST |
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RavenscraftCybernetics | 08 Apr 2014 7:47 a.m. PST |
enough payload to rescue two american astronauts from the ISS. |
bsrlee | 08 Apr 2014 7:47 a.m. PST |
Yep, someone forgot the password
.. |
Quaker | 08 Apr 2014 5:52 p.m. PST |
What a stupid click-bait title. The XS-37B is being used as a surveillance satellite, they will de-orbit it when it is low on fuel for maneuvering. Cutting edge sensors are expensive and traditional satellites useful lifespan is limited by their fuel load. With the X-37B it only costs the price of a space launch and not a whole satellite when its fuel runs out. |
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