On Monday, the covert X-37B robot spaceplane of the United States military was ready to take off from Florida on its seventh orbital mission.
This was the vehicle's maiden launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, which has the capacity to raise it to a new height.
With three reusable rocket cores linked together, the Falcon Heavy was scheduled to launch, weather permitting, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral within a 10-minute nighttime window beginning at 8:14 p.m. EST (0114 GMT Tuesday).
The weather postponed the initial intentions to launch the spacecraft late on Sunday. U.S. Space Systems Command stated that improved projections indicated a 70% possibility of optimal conditions on Monday night.
Few specifics concerning the mission, which was carried out by the US Air Force and Space Force as part of the National Security Space Launch program, have been made public by the US Defense Department.
The X-37B, a space shuttle-like vehicle about the size of a small bus that was built by Boeing, is designed to carry out technology experiments and deliver a variety of payloads during extended orbital flights. It has been in orbit on six occasions since 2010; the first five were launched by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, using Atlas V rockets. The most recent mission took place in May 2020 and used a Falcon 9 booster provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The X-37B has been in space for longer with each voyage; its most recent mission lasted for more than two years when it returned in November 2022. It has always operated in low-Earth orbit, traveling at heights less than 1,200 miles (2,000 km).
With its greater power than the X-37B, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket was supposed to launch the most recent mission for the first time. This rocket could potentially reach geosynchronous orbit, which is more than 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above Earth.
