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SpaceX ’s Falcon Heavy rocket launched a secretive military spaceplane to orb last night after week of wait , though light details about the mission have been turn to the populace .
The Falcon Heavy lifted off on the cloak-and-dagger mission at 8:07 postmortem Eastern from NASA ’s Kennedy Space Center . The U.S. Space Force ’s X-37B space plane , a reusable vehicle that acts as a assort testbed for experiment in space , was the only payload on the massive rocket .
As with the other six uncrewed X-37B missionary post , little is known about this mission . The target field , mission duration and many of the payloads are classified . Even the window of the small outer space aeroplane are blacken out .
One of the big mysteries of this particular mission is the Space Force ’s choice to hold a triple - boosted Falcon Heavy . This is the first time the military machine has selected Falcon Heavy for an X-37B foreign mission ; previously , the 29 - human foot foresightful space plane has launched on SpaceX ’s little Falcon 9 and United Launch Alliance ’s Atlas quintet arugula .
The extra boost could suggest that this mission is heading to farther scope , though again , the outer space plane ’s commission profile is unavowed . The Boeing - progress X-37B , which looks like a miniature space shuttle , will eventually return to Earth and land on a track exchangeable to a established aircraft .
In a instruction , the Space Force said that the commission , designated USSF-52 , has objectives including “ operate the reusable spaceplane in new orbital regime , try out with future blank land cognizance technologies , and investigating the radiation effects on materials provided by NASA . ” The only known consignment hatful with the last of these aim : a NASA experimentation known as Seeds-2 , which will explore what happens to flora when they are exposed to the coarse irradiation of distance .
This is the fifth time SpaceX has launched a Falcon Heavy rocket this year , and the ninth overall since 2018 . The successful launch came on the heels of more than two weeks of time lag , first due to pitiable conditions and then again due to issuance that were not expose to the world . It was SpaceX ’s 97th launch this year ( it nail it ’s 98th just time of day later on , when a Falcon 9 launched a mountain of Starlink chick at around 11 PM Eastern ) .
