Loud, thunderous booms. A secret spaceplane. Florida.
Have I got your attention yet?
Floridians flooded social media early Saturday morning with reports of sonic booms of unknown origin. The sudden sound could be heard from Jacksonville to Orlando just after 5 a.m.
The cause? Boeing’s X-37B, an autonomous spaceplane returning to Earth after having spent over 900 days in space under the watchful eyes of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force.
The plane’s covert return quickly became the worst-kept secret of the weekend when the sound of its re-entry woke up potentially millions of people.
The X-37B landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility on Sunday, 908 days after it was sent into space on what was dubbed Mission USSF-7, which included determining the long-term effects of space travel on seeds among other more top-secret tasks.
"The X-37B continues to push the boundaries of experimentation, enabled by an elite government and industry team behind the scenes," X-37B Program Director Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen said. "The ability to conduct on-orbit experiments and bring them home safely for in-depth analysis on the ground has proven valuable for the Department of the Air Force and scientific community. The addition of the service module on OTV-6 allowed us to host more experiments than ever before."
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