Thursday, August 8, 2019

U.S. Air Force's X-37B Military Space Plane Has Been In Space For 700 Days

U.S. DOD

Space.com: X-37B Military Space Plane's Latest Mystery Mission Hits 700 Days

The longest X-37B mission to date is 718 days.

The U.S. Air Force's X-37B military space plane has now been circling Earth for 700 days, just a few weeks shy of the vehicle's spaceflight-duration record.

The robotic X-37B launched on its fifth and latest mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle 5 (OTV-5), on Sept. 7, 2017. And the reusable spacecraft, which looks like a miniature version of NASA's space shuttle, has been zipping around our planet ever since.

Exactly what the X-37B is doing up there remains a topic of much speculation; the solar-powered spacecraft's missions, and most of its payloads, remain classified. The Air Force tends to talk about the X-37B program in general terms, stressing that the space plane tests technologies for future reusable spacecraft and takes experiments up to space and back.

Read more ....

Update: Everything We Know About the Air Force's Secret X-37B Spaceplane (Popular Mechanics)

WNU Editor: We still do not know what it is doing up there.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can test a lot of reliability and material life in that time.

Bob Huntley said...

My guess is that, among other things, it is the communications back-up facility in the event of war and the communications sats are destroyed.

Anonymous said...

BS. It's storing high quality porn that must survive in a NEE* scenario

*Near Extinction Event

Anonymous said...

Checking out all the Satellites .let me guess it also can shoot them down .lol old tech .