The record of the most secret American ship: these are the things we know

The American secret ship X-37B landed these days on Earth after breaking the previous record of time in orbit around our planet.

The record is now 720 days, and the previous one was 717. Thus, the final news was announced several days in succession by all major and specialized American media.

X-37B is actually a pilot-free Boeing ship, built at first glance, under NASA's former spaceship programme. Compared to the famous “spatial tectacy” that has carried American astronauts into space for many years, X-37B is four times smaller.

Its length is only 8 feet [8.8 m] long, its wing plain is only 4.6 feet [4.6 m], height nine feet [2.9 m], and weighing about 5 tons. The rest is the same; design, view “aeroplane”, returning to the atmosphere as a sailboat...

The most intriguing thing about this space program is that there is little information.

“There are two main goals of X-37B: testing for future ship technologies and operational experiments that can be analysed after returning to Earth,” is the official explanation of the US Air Force. Five years ago, however, Guardian conveyed the security experts' claims that it was a project to test surveillance and spying sensors. He even speculated that one of the ship's tasks could be the theft of a satellite into Earth's orbit. It's easy to understand why a project like this was classified.

But the true size of the secret about the fifth launch of X-37B, called OTV-5, are beginning to be understood, according to American media. They show that the most succinct description of the fifth mission, whose launch took place on September 7, 2017, with the help of SpaceX Falcon, a day before Hurricane Irma, shows the purpose of OTV-5 for “electronic behavior and space optical fluctuations”.

Of course, breaking the record in just three days was of great professional, personal and political importance to USAF Commander General David L. Goldfein, so that he could make himself important to his superiors, justify money spent, and seek more.

But that doesn't explain why the moment of landing would be hidden in public. To understand this, it should be remembered that it was only in June of this year, where for the first time, at least with full knowledge of it, X-37B was photographed in space. He was an amateur photographer from the Netherlands, Ralph Vandebergh. And then he immediately posted the photos on his blog and on Twitter.

Vandeberg wasn't the first big success. Previously, he was able to photograph astronauts I SS on a spaceship. However, X-37B photography was something special, as no one should know his position. Vandeberg managed to film the ship on June 30th, and former USAF Heather Wilson's secretary stopped taking office the following day.

She was succeeded by her former deputy, Matt Donovan. On the same day, General Goldfein succeeded in command of his predecessor, General Mark Wells. The truth is that since March of this year, Heather Wilson announced he would leave his post to become president of the University of Texas in El Paso.

It is also true that General Goldfein was appointed commander of USAF since 2016. But if viewed by dates, this coincided with the fact that all these replacements were performed just one or two days after Dutch astronomer discovered the ship.

The issue became even more unpleasant when Wilson later publicly declared in July, now as a former secretary, that X-37B was able to change orbit so well that it amazed professional and amateur satellite researchers and that she was very happy about it.

While Vandeberg continued to publish pictures of the ship in a higher and lower resolution.