X-37B mystery plane: nine-month flight extended

X-37B robot plane has its mission extended past 270 days in continuous flight. The mission of the X-37B is unknown.?

The Air Force is extending the mission of an experimental robotic space plane that's been circling the Earth for the past nine months.

Skip to next paragraph

The pilotless?X-37B?Orbital Test Vehicle, which looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle, was launched in March from Cape Canaveral, Fla. At the time, Air Force officials offered few details about the mission, saying that the space plane simply provided a way to test new technologies, such as satellite sensors and other components, in space.

The military did confirm that the 29-foot space plane was slated to land 270 days later, which would be Wednesday, on a 15,000-foot airstrip at Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, Calif. Now the Air Force has announced that the mission has been extended, but the exact landing date has not yet been set.

"We initially planned for a nine-month mission, which we are roughly at now, but we will continue to extend the mission as circumstances allow," Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre, the spacecraft's systems program director, said in a statement. "Keeping the X-37 in orbit will provide us with additional experimentation opportunities and allow us to extract the maximum value out of the mission."

The?X-37B?was built in tight secrecy by Boeing Co.'s Space and Intelligence Systems unit in Huntington Beach, Calif. Engineering work was done at the company's facilities in Huntington Beach and nearby Seal Beach. Other components were fabricated at its satellite-making plant in El Segundo, Calif.

Some industry analysts have theorized that ? because of its clandestine nature ? the?X-37B?could be a precursor to an orbiting weapon, capable of dropping bombs or disabling foreign satellites as it circles the globe. This has never been acknowledged by the Pentagon.

"We are learning new things about the vehicle every day, which makes the mission a very dynamic process," McIntyre said.

The?X-37B?now orbiting the Earth is the second launched by the military. The first?X-37B?was launched in April 2010 and it landed 224 days later its own ? fully automated ? at Vandenberg.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/jTM1qqOW450/X-37B-mystery-plane-nine-month-flight-extended

ginger white conrad murray sentencing conrad murray sentencing sopa urban meyer adam shulman adam shulman