After nearly two years in orbit, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B robotic space plane landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today with a loud sonic boom, but nary a word about what exactly it was doing up there all this time.
This was the fourth and longest classified mission for the Boeing-built craft, which was launched from Florida 718 days earlier in 2015 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The three earlier missions were flown in 2010, 2011-2012 and 2012-2014, with landings at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The Air Force’s fleet of X-37B Orbital Test Vehicles has now spent a total of 2,085 days to gauge the reusable winged plane’s ability to conduct on-orbit operations and return for airplane-style horizontal landings.
