The U.S. Air Force is preparing for the return of its mystery-shrouded X-37B space plane, which will touchdown on Earth this week after 22 months of secret mission in orbit.
The Orbital Test Vehicle could arrive as early as Tuesday, Oct. 14 and will touch down at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Orbital Test Vehicle 3 (OTV-3) was launched aboard the Atlas 5 rocket in December 2012.
In a statement, Vandenberg Air Force Base said that the exact data and time of the landing will depend on weather conditions and technical considerations but it is already making the necessary preparations to ensure the safe landing of the reusable aircraft.
"Team Vandenberg stands ready to implement safe landing operations for the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, the third time for this unique mission" said 30th Space Wing commander Col. Keith Baits in the statement released Friday.
The 29-foot long robotic space plane is an experimental spacecraft built by the Phantom Works division of aerospace company Boeing. It has the ability to autonomously fly itself during landings and can stay in orbit for months by tapping on a solar array for its power source. The military said that the spacecraft is designed for testing technologies but is mum on the details of the vehicle's missions.
The U.S. Air Force has already sent its two X-37B space drone for missions since 2010 albeit details of these flights are kept secret. The maiden mission, OTV-1, which used the same vehicle as OTV-3, was launched in April 2010 and lasted for 225 days. The second mission, which was launched in March the following year, involved the second plane and lasted 469 days. OTV-3 broke the endurance records of the first two missions for staying in orbit for 671 days.
It will be the third time that an Orbital Test Vehicle mission culminates at the Vandenberg Air Force Base but succeeding missions may use a different landing site as the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have come up with an agreement last week for the relocation of the X-37B program to the U.S. space agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Air Force's X-37B Program for use of the center's Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) Bays 1 and 2 to process the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle for launch," NASA said in a statement. "The X-37B Program conducted testing at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility to demonstrate that landing the vehicle at the former shuttle runway is a technically feasible option."
