The body seems relatively cool compared to what I can find of the space shuttle, despite not quite knowing how long after touch-down the image was taken. I wonder if some new heat-dissipating technology, or similar, was amongst those being tested?
I wasn't concerned too much for publication date, but more so about the time between touch-down and the thermal camera going "click"... in terms of thermal loss comparisons to the NASA space shuttle.
It doesn't seem that mysterious. It's almost certainly involved in reconnaissance.
[T]he military spacecraft was passing over the
same region on the ground once every four days,
a pattern he called “a common feature of U.S.
imaging reconnaissance satellites.”
In six sightings, the team has found that the
craft orbits as far north as 40 degrees
latitude...In moving from as far as 40 degrees
north latitude to 40 degrees south latitude,
the military spacecraft passes over many
global trouble spots, including Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea.
Secret! Plane! News! Articles! Once A Week! Still. Mysterious! Secretive! High Tech! Military Dominance Of! Some Sort! For Sure! Never! Spoken About! In! News! Returns! To! Earth! Who! Was The! Article's! Source?
It's been posted here repeatedly because sometimes submissions don't get traction for whatever reason. It's newsworthy insofar as it's been in space for ~2 years and just returned, which is a long mission for a reusable. I don't think there's anything wrong with being interested in military technology.
Since it's observable with a telescope, the existence of the object is not the secret, but the information it provides access to, and the motives for using this stategic platform, remain speculative. There's nothing else like it that we know of, that any branch of the military, or that any paramilitary defense organization will admit to, and yes, that is being used as a form of propaganda.
Science and the military do intersect for some interesting infotainment though, even if the implicit misanthropy of it all is somewhat off-putting.
It is an interesting, if perplexing, capability. My guess is that they are using it basically like a refuelable reconnaissance satellite. That way they can task it to various hot spots, keep its orbit changing so that folks won't be able to predict when it will be overhead, and yet not lose the hardware once it is out of gas.
I note that a Falcon Heavy will be able to toss it into a GTO :-) That is when you can use it to be really mean to people if you choose.
And to elaborate on what a GTO is, rather than permit the preceeding comment to become ensconced in jargon, the "T" stands for "transfer" in the sense of transferring from maybe a lower orbit to a higher orbit, or, in other words, changing altitude.
So, a Geosychronous Transfer Orbit, gains in altitude, while staying directly overhead at the same point on the earth's surface, even though the earth below is still in rotational motion. But, at points closer to the equator (where much of the good rocketry real estate resides), to keep up with a fixed point on the ground, while traveling farther and farther away from the central axis of rotation, ever greater lateral distances must be covered at increasingly greater speeds.
Meaning, if you can keep your rocket directly overhead, over a zone and airspace you can control militarily (by denying enemies access to it, or maybe by choosing a place that doesn't need to be defended), while putting it as high in the sky as possible, it will be much more difficult to shoot down, providing the advantage of being able to then move this proverbial chess piece into position anywhere you want, without too much concern of being denied access to that perch.
I'm wondering if this could be a vehicle not just for reconnaissance but also delivering a kinetic energy projectile from space ? (Note - i'm merely speculating)
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] threadPicture is from a while ago.
http://www.outlookseries.com/A0992/Security/3696_X-37B_Orbit...
So it's just a few seconds after touchdown.
Science and the military do intersect for some interesting infotainment though, even if the implicit misanthropy of it all is somewhat off-putting.
I note that a Falcon Heavy will be able to toss it into a GTO :-) That is when you can use it to be really mean to people if you choose.
So, a Geosychronous Transfer Orbit, gains in altitude, while staying directly overhead at the same point on the earth's surface, even though the earth below is still in rotational motion. But, at points closer to the equator (where much of the good rocketry real estate resides), to keep up with a fixed point on the ground, while traveling farther and farther away from the central axis of rotation, ever greater lateral distances must be covered at increasingly greater speeds.
Meaning, if you can keep your rocket directly overhead, over a zone and airspace you can control militarily (by denying enemies access to it, or maybe by choosing a place that doesn't need to be defended), while putting it as high in the sky as possible, it will be much more difficult to shoot down, providing the advantage of being able to then move this proverbial chess piece into position anywhere you want, without too much concern of being denied access to that perch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment