X37-B Space plane tracked by amateurs...

Here she is:

It took the amateur sleuths nearly a month to hunt down the first X-37B after it launched on its inaugural mission. That’s an eternity in sky-spotting time.

The second time around was easier. The U.S. space plane was discovered just four days after it blasted into orbit, earlier this month. Cape Town, South Africa’s Greg Roberts — “a pioneer in using telescopic video cameras to track spacecraft, chalking up exceptional results over the years,” according to Space.com — spotted this second secret spacecraft, just like he found the first.

The X-37B has generated intense interest, long before it ever left the ground. Boeing originally developed the 29-foot unmanned craft — a kind of miniature Space Shuttle — for NASA. Then, the military took over in 2004, and the space plane went black. Its payloads were classified, its missions hush-hush.

From: Source: Wired

Apparently, they have used this platform's maneuvering capabilities to the fullest. Here's the graphic showing her alleged orbit (at least as of recently):



Enjoy!

Fascinating. Am i the only one a little let down with the fact that it looks like a space shuttle? i was hoping for something uber kewl looking.

good find!

I wonder what kind of cheese she is carrying now?

Why the need for all the secrecy?

What am I looking at with the graphs of her orbit?

reply to post by CastleMadeOfSand


Its coded by color to show how many times she was over a given location in any of the three days she was spotted. Slide bar on the bottom will get you to the legend of the graphic.

It appears this second time around it was a polar orbit that was taken.

Originally posted by Maxmars

Apparently, they have used this platform's maneuvering capabilities to the fullest. Here's the graphic showing her alleged orbit (at least as of recently):



Enjoy!

No, that image just shows what kind of coverage you get at various orbital inclinations. The X-37B is currently in a 43 degree inclination orbit.

As the article states:

You can even see the space plane for yourself: The X-37B is traveling in a slightly elliptical orbit more than 200 miles up, swooping from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south.

That orbit gives some indications about what the space plane is actually doing up there. The typical spy satellite has a polar orbit, which means “it can cover the whole earth, and it can fly over the same spot at the same sun angle each time it comes overhead,” explains Brian Weeden, a former Air Force Space Command officer, now with the Secure World Foundation.

The X-37B, on the other hand, is orbiting around the fat middle of the planet, traveling over the Middle East, Africa, and fair chunk of China. “It means they are giving up global coverage and predictable shadow lengths, but getting more frequent passes,” Weeden says. The orbit lends credence to the idea that the space plane is an orbiting spy.

reply to post by nataylor


Thank you for the correction.

reply to post by Maxmars


So they found the 37B but no Niburu? Great post.

This is a testament to how many eyes are on the sky at any given time. And it also shows how hard it is to keep a secret with modern technology.

Why keep it a secret? It's just a robot space truck that thinks on it's own, re-acts on it's own, and has a nice big payload bay. What could you possibly want with a drone like that in space? did I say "drone", like in say, "predator"