Black Ops for Mini Shuttle

NASA has finally  started to add a little sci-fi flair to its designs for spacecraft, the Boeing X-37B has a much more streamlined look to it and has just finished a nine month mission in space after its launch in April. NASA imposed a news blackout on the mission after launch even though the ship was easily tracked by amateur astronomers as it followed a standard route for comms satellites.

The X-37B is an unmanned vehicle and is a test bed for the next generation of space ferry. The mini-shuttle measures 29 feet, 3 inches in length and has a 15-foot (4.5-meter) wing span, compared to the 122-foot (37-meter) orbiters with wing spans of 78 feet. Unlike NASA's space shuttles, which can stay in orbit about two weeks, X-37B is designed to spend as long as nine months in space, then land autonomously on a runway. The X-37B looks like a space shuttle orbiter, with a similar shape and payload bay for cargo and experiments.