The X-37B spacecraft looks a bit like NASA's space shuttles, only much smaller. The vehicle is about 29 feet long by 15 feet wide (8.8 by 4.5 meters), with a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed. By comparison, two entire X-37Bs could fit inside the payload bay of a space shuttle. The space plane, built by Boeing for the U.S. military, can fly long, extended missions because of its solar array power system, which allows it to stay in orbit for up to nine months, Air Force officials have said.
What exactly the vehicle does while circling the Earth for so long is a mystery, since the craft's payloads and missions are classified. Partly as a result of the secrecy, some concern has been raised — particularly by Russia and China — that the X-37B is a space weapon of some sort. Space.com
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| The second Boeing X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, built for the U.S. Air Force, is shown here during encapsulation within the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket's 5-meter fairing at Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., on Feb. 8, 2011. The Air Force launched the new space plane from the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 5. |
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| The Air Force's mission emblem for the secretive OTV-2 space plane flight using a robotic X-37B spacecraft is visible as the vehicle is mated to its Atlas 5 booster in preparation for launch from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. |
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| A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying the Air Force's second X-37B robot space plane, the Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2), launches from its Space Launch Complex-41 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 5, 2011 at 5:46 p.m. EST. |
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