After spending 15 months in the Earth’s orbit, an unmanned Air Force space ship had safely completed its top secret mission and return Saturday morning, and landed at the Vandenberg Air Force Base.
It a report issued by the W.J. Hennigan, “the autonomous X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in March 2011, touched down at 5:48am PDT.”
The Boeing-built space ship looks similar to a miniaturized space shuttle, was earlier expected to return on 30 November 2011.
Further, Hennigan said, “Although the X-37B program is ‘classified,’ some of the particulars are known.”
“More than 10 years ago, it began as a NASA program to test new technologies for the space shuttle. But when the government decided to retire the aging fleet of shuttles, the Pentagon took over the program and cloaked it in secrecy,” Hennigan said.
He added, “The spacecraft is about 29 feet long, or about the size of a small school bus, with stubby wings that stretch out about 15 feet tip to tip. It is one-fifth the size of the space shuttle and can draw on the sun for electricity using unfolding solar panels. It is designed to stay in orbit for 270 days.”
On the other hand, the X-37B program manager, Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre said, “The vehicle was designed for a mission duration of about 270 days.”
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.”
He said, “With the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, the X-37B OTV program brings a singular capability to space technology development. The return capability allows the Air Force to test new technologies without the same risk commitment faced by other programs.”
