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On Friday, the Space Force published a picture taken last year from a camera mounted on the secretive X-37B space plane while high above the Earth. Space.com notes that the “one other glimpse” of the plane in space was while it was “deploying from Falcon Heavy’s upper stage” during its December 2023 launch.
The Space Force says it snapped the photo during experimental “first-of-kind” aerobraking maneuvers “to safely change its orbit using minimal fuel.” The Air Force said in October this would involve “a series of passes using the drag of Earth’s atmosphere,” and that once complete, it would resume its other experiments before de-orbiting.
This is the X-37B’s seventh mission; its sixth, which concluded in November 2022, lasted about two-and-a-half years (or 908 days) and was its longest mission to date. Prior to its launch, the Space Force described mission goals that included “operating in new orbital regimes” and testing ”future space domain awareness technologies.“ It also mentioned an onboard NASA experiment involving plant seeds’ radiation exposure during long spaceflight missions.
