After a Year In Orbit, US Air Force's X37-B Will Conclude Its Secret Mission 243
SomePgmr writes "The U.S Air Force's highly secret unmanned space plane will land in June — ending a year-long mission in orbit. The experimental Boeing X37-B has been circling Earth at 17,000 miles per hour and was due to land in California in December. It is now expected to land in mid to late June. And still, no one knows what the space drone has been doing up there all this time."
Actually (Score:2, Informative)
Someone probably knows, I'd bet several people. Just not yet us.
Re:Fast (Score:4, Informative)
It consumed roughtly 737,400lbs of fuel, minus the weight of the Atlas V rocket (so 500,000 lbs of fuel?) to get it in orbit. To orbit the earth at an altitude above the non-negligible atmosphere, you need to travel at around 17,000mph or more. This is roughly the same speed the Shuttle, ISS, Dragon capsule, Hubble, et all are moving. The rocket puts it in orbit at that speed. I think once in orbit, about 6 months in to it's mission, it did an orbital course correction, which if done at the correct time, requires surprisingly little fuel to do.