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The US Space Force’s spaceplane finally landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after spending nearly three years orbiting around Earth on a secretive mission.
After 908 days in orbit, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-6 (OTV-6) landed on November 12 at 5:22 a.m. ET, breaking the previous record. The previous record for the Boeing-built reusable vehicle was 780 continuous days in orbit.
In May 2020, the spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. This was the mysterious spacecraft’s sixth flight above the Earth, delivering payloads for both NASA and the US military.
In order to maximize its ability to deliver payloads to orbit, the unmanned spacecraft also carried a service module. However, the service module didn’t come back to Earth since it was destroyed and disposed of before reentry.
The spaceplane, as its name implies, is a cross between an aeroplane and a spacecraft that can take off into orbit like a spacecraft and land horizontally on Earth like an airplane. The Space Force noted that its spaceplane would be able to transport experiments to orbit and return them to Earth for analysis, but it did not specify the precise capabilities of the spacecraft.
“This mission highlights the Space Force’s focus on collaboration in space exploration and expanding low-cost access to space for our partners, within and outside of the Department of the Air Force (DAF),” General Chance Saltzman, chief of Space Operations, said in a statement.
The mission payload included a solar energy experiment designed by the Naval Research Lab that’s meant to capture sunlight and convert it into electrical energy, in addition to the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat-8. NASA also loaded the spaceplane with its own experiments, including the Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space (METIS-2), which will study the effects of space exposure on different materials.
Aside from this, it’s not entirely clear what the spaceplane was doing up there for the past 908 days. The U.S. Space Force has shared little information about its reusable vehicle and it was unclear as to when the vehicle was going to land.
