The launch of the top secret mini space shuttle – the X-37B
On 7th of May 2017, The US landed its experimental X-37B plane in Florida, bringing an end to a two year mission that is a complete secret.
This was its fourth mission.
The plane, which can fly itself and looks like a small space shuttle, landed a few days ago at Cape Canaveral
The first test flight of its kind was back in 2010, then another one followed in 2012, we even wrote an article about it back then:
Americas Secret X-37B Space Plane returns back to earth two years on!
Obviously the US Air Force didn’t reveal what it had been doing in the air or why it had come back down. Some have suggested that the plane could be testing a new kind of satellite weapon, or conducting surveillance. But there has been no official clarification of what it does during its long missions.
The X-37B, one of two in the Air Force fleet, conducted unspecified experiments for more than 700 days while in orbit. It was the fourth and lengthiest mission so far for the secretive program, managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.
The orbiters “perform risk reduction, experimentation and concept-of-operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies,” the Air Force has said without providing details. The cost of the program is also classified, as it is for many other programs, or shall I say: “Secret Space Programs”
The Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit group promoting the peaceful exploration of space, says the secrecy surrounding the X-37B suggests the presence of intelligence-related hardware being tested or evaluated aboard the craft.
The vehicles are 29 feet long and have a wingspan of 15 feet, making them about one quarter of the size of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s now-retired space shuttles.
The landing was the X-37B’s first in Florida. The three previous landings took place at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Air Force relocated the program in 2014, taking over two of NASA’s former shuttle-processing hangars.
The Air Force intends to launch the fifth X-37B mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center, later this year.
U.I.P Summary: There you have it: a secret spacecraft, with a secret mission, financed by a secret budget, at a secret cost. The only thing which is not secret is where the money came from: You & I the taxpayers ..
So shouldn’t we be entitled to know what’s going on there?!!
And that’s only one of the many, there are a few other crafts they won’t show to the public, like the huge spaceship discovered by Gary McKinnon a few years ago
Yaz, Mwv