The U.S. Space Force's X-37B orbital test vehicle Mission Seven successfully lands at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on March 7, 2025. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Space Force)
The U.S. government's secret X-37B spaceplane has returned to Earth after a 434-day orbital mission, the U.S. Space Force said.
While details of the mysterious unmanned spacecraft's more than year-long mission remain largely classified, the Space Force is highlighting the recent flight as the start of an “exciting new phase” in the X-37B program.
“Mission 7 broke new ground by demonstrating the X-37B's ability to flexibly achieve its test and development objectives in a variety of orbital regimes,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in a statement.
In particular, the Space Force noted the spaceplane's successful execution of several aerobraking maneuvers, a technique that uses atmospheric drag to lower a spacecraft's orbit with minimal fuel expenditure.
Satellites typically need to use their onboard thrusters to change altitude. Aerobraking instead involves a spaceplane changing the angle of its nose relative to the direction of its orbit, thereby exposing more of its broad underbelly to the atmosphere. This creates drag, slowing the craft and lowering its altitude as it passes the Earth multiple times.
The X-37B launched on Mission 7 from Vandenberg Space Military Base in California on Dec. 29, 2023, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth. During the mission, the autonomous spacecraft also conducted various experiments related to space radiation and “space domain awareness technology,” which likely refers to detecting various objects in orbit, according to a statement. Space Force officials did not specify what exactly those experiments entailed. The aircraft returned to Vandenberg in the dark of night on March 7, 2025.
According to The Aviationist, the X-37B spaceplane, developed by Boeing, was originally a NASA project that was then handed over to the U.S. military in 2004. The mission's primary goal is to advance reusable spacecraft technology, which launch vertically on a rocket, can orbit for months or years to conduct experiments, and then land like a regular airplane. Its longest stay in space was 909 days, from May 2020 to November 2022. Its shortest flight, in 2010, lasted 224 days.
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Brandon SpectorSocial LinksNavigationEditor
Brandon is the Space/Physics Editor at Live Science. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation, and elsewhere. He holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. He especially enjoys writing about space, geoscience, and the mysteries of the universe.
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