X-37B Secret Space Plane's Second Launch Today 59
garymortimer writes "The X-37B will launch soon for a second 240 day flight and the cat and mouse game of following it will begin. Amateur astronomers have been able to find the orbit changing high flying UAV on at least two occasions after it altered height. For the first X-37B OTV mission, Air Force officials focused on testing and evaluating the performance capabilities of the vehicle. This second mission will build upon the OTV-1 on-orbit demonstration, validate and replicate initial testing and fine tune the technical parameters of the vehicle tests."
Maybe, maybe not. (Score:2, Informative)
Friday's launch has been scrubbed. Will try again on Saturday, March 5, 2011.
See http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av026/status.html.
Re:Secret? (Score:5, Informative)
> I guess there is a new definition of "secret" that I'm not aware of.
Geeze, we get these comments from people attempting to be clever every single time there's a X-37 article. It's secret in the sense that nobody without security clearance has any idea of what its full mission is, what orbital shifts it's going to be making, or what's inside of its payload bay. If you want to be super strict about it then there's no such thing as a secret satellite launch, since any major country can tell when you're launching something into orbit.