US Air Force launches mysterious space plane mission for third time

Submitted by beoowzao on Sun, 2012-12-30 03:25

While speculation was rife as to the exact, previous missions of the United States Air Force’s “space plane,” the craft was sent to its third mission on Tuesday.

The X-37B craft, part space shuttle and part plane, has previously flown two missions in the past couple of years, being sent to Earth’s orbit for extended periods of time with little to no details as to what the space plane might be doing there and what the US Air Force may be getting from the space craft’s missions.

Shrouded in mystery, the official line on the space plane’s missions is to act as an "experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform," but details of its previous jaunts have not been released and neither was the US Air Force forthcoming about the craft’s upcoming mission, when it was expected to be launched on Tuesday from the Patrick Air force Base in Florida. Details as to its launch time or the purpose of X-37B’s mission were also not disclosed.

The X-37B is an unmanned spacecraft designed by Boeing and delivered into space on Saturn V rockets. While much smaller than an actual space shuttle, the craft has shown particular wherewithal as it has been able to spend considerable amounts of time in space. First developed back in 1999 by NASA, the project was handed over to the US military in 2005, in whose hands it has been funded ever since by an undisclosed amount.

The space plane’s previous missions, one in 2010 and the other in 2011, saw it in Earth’s orbit for quite an extended period, with the first mission lasting 224 days and the second, 469 days. Of course, with no details being offered on X-37B’s third mission, speculation fuelled the idea that the space plane was being used to spy on China’s new spacelab, Tiangong-1, which was launched last year. However, experts discredited the notion, with one expert, analyzing X-37B’s orbit, saying that it was most likely being used to monitor Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Again, officially little is being offered, but the third mission may be to test the craft’s durability, as upon its return last year, program manager Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre said, "We knew from post-flight assessments from the first mission that OTV-1 could have stayed in orbit longer. So one of the goals of this mission was to see how much farther we could push the on-orbit duration."