{"id":28317,"date":"2014-10-18T11:50:16","date_gmt":"2014-10-18T15:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28317"},"modified":"2014-10-18T11:50:16","modified_gmt":"2014-10-18T15:50:16","slug":"unmanned-x-37b-returns-to-earth-after-nearly-two-years-in-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/10\/18\/unmanned-x-37b-returns-to-earth-after-nearly-two-years-in-orbit\/","title":{"rendered":"Unmanned X-37B returns to earth after nearly two years in orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <em>Telegraph<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/space\/11171389\/Top-secret-US-space-drone-returns-to-Earth-after-two-year-orbit.html\" target=\"_blank\">Rob Crilly<\/a> tells us what is known about the X-37B&#8217;s mission:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It arrived back at a California air base after dark. Only the eagle-eyed would have spotted the snub-nosed spacecraft gliding out of the black sky.<\/p>\n<p>Officially, the unmanned Boeing-built X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle had just completed its longest ever mission, spending almost two years circling the Earth, conducting experiments.<\/p>\n<p>But its secretive history has sparked countless theories about what the computer controlled craft was really doing in space. <\/p>\n<p>One idea is that the US Air Force has developed a drone spy ship, which it uses to shadow Chinese satellites. Another more fanciful claim is that it has been developed to engage in sat-napping &mdash; gobbling up rival spy satellites like something from a James Bond film.<\/p>\n<p>There were few clues in an official press release.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe landing of OTV-3 marks a hallmark event for the program,\u201d said an unidentified programme manager quoted in the Air Force statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe mission is our longest to date and we&#8217;re pleased with the incremental progress we&#8217;ve seen in our testing of the reusable space plane. The dedication and hard work by the entire team has made us extremely proud.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Telegraph, Rob Crilly tells us what is known about the X-37B&#8217;s mission: It arrived back at a California air base after dark. Only the eagle-eyed would have spotted the snub-nosed spacecraft gliding out of the black sky. Officially, the unmanned Boeing-built X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle had just completed its longest ever mission, spending [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,15,13],"tags":[722,388,716],"class_list":["post-28317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-science","category-technology","category-usa","tag-lowearthorbit","tag-secrecy","tag-spacecraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7mJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28318,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28317\/revisions\/28318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}