The U.S. military’s secretive X-37B space plane embarked on its seventh mission, expected to span at least a couple of years. Carried into space by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after a two-week delay due to technical issues, the autonomous, reusable plane carries classified experiments and a NASA study on radiation’s impact on materials. Resembling a smaller version of NASA’s retired space shuttles, the X-37B operates without astronauts and can take off like a rocket and land horizontally like a plane. This mission follows the longest X-37B flight that ended a year ago after 2.5 years in orbit.

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