Secret U.S. Space Plane Launches for Fourth Time in Five Years

Not all U.S. drones are flying over Southwest Asia. At least one of them is in space.

The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday launched an X-37B space plane from Cape Canaveral. It went into space aboard an Atlas V rocket and it will orbit the earth for an unknown amount of time, but it could be a year or more.

The Air Force has two X-37Bs that, like the Space Shuttle, take off like a rocket and land (video) like a plane. They’re unmanned, about a quarter of the size of the now-retired Space Shuttle and have cargo bays about the size of a pickup truck bed. This is the fourth known X-37B mission.

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