The Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane gets more mysterious by the day. Designed to spend up to nine months on unspecified errands in Earth’s orbit, the second copy of the Boeing-made craft, known as Orbital Test Vehicle 2, has now been in space for a year and two days — and is still going strong. The endurance milestone is unqualified good news for America’s space force at a time when its funding and future missions are in doubt.
There’s just one thing. We still don’t know exactly what the 30-foot-long X-37B is doing up there.
Since the launch of Orbital Test Vehicle 1 in April 2010, the Air Force has insisted that the X-37 program is a purely scientific endeavor. But analysts say the spacefaring craft, which launches into orbit atop a rocket but glides back to Earth like an airplane, is capable of much more than that. It could be an orbital spy — in essence, a more maneuverable satellite. Or it could be used to tamper with enemy satellites.
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