| Dec 11, 2012 |
Air Force sends mystery X-37B mini-shuttle back to space (w/video) |
| (Nanowerk News) A top-secret mini-space shuttle has blasted off from Cape Canaveral. |
| The Air Force launched the unmanned spacecraft Tuesday aboard an Atlas V rocket. |
| It's the second flight for this original X-37B spaceplane. It circled the planet for seven months in 2010. A second X-37B spacecraft spent more than a year in orbit. |
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| X-37B spacecraft |
| These mystery machines are about one-quarter the size of NASA's old space shuttles and they can land automatically on a runway. |
| The military isn't saying much if anything about this new secret mission. But one scientific observer, Harvard University's Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed. |
| The two previous secret flights were in roughly 200-plus-mile-high orbits. |
| Watch a news clip from the X-37B's last trip: |
| Source: via Associated Press |
