The X-37B unmanned space plane landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Friday. The awkward-looking machine glided to an uneventful landing at 9:34 a.m. local time. “I’m extremely proud of our team for coming together to execute this third safe and successful landing,” said Col. Keith Balts, commander of the 30th Space Wing. The little spacecraft, about the size of a bizjet with an outsized lifting body fuselage, was in orbit for 674 days but even though the Air Force apparently doesn’t mind us knowing what it looks like, it’s not saying what it was doing.
That, of course, has led to speculation ranging from nuclear weapons capability to some sort of biological experiment. The middle ground seems to suggest that it’s a test bed for new technologies and the runway-landing capability is just an economical and safer way of ensuring the gear on board gets back. The Air Force has two of them and is building hangars at the Kennedy Space Center so they can launch and recover at the same facility.
