US military robot spaceplane blasts off on secret mission aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket

The US military’s X-37B robot spaceplane blasted off from Florida on Thursday night on its secretive seventh mission. The mission marks the first time the uncrewed, autonomous craft has been launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, capable of delivering it to unprecedented altitudes and a higher orbit than ever before. Composed of three liquid-fueled rocket cores strapped together, the Falcon Heavy roared off its launch pad from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in a spectacular liftoff carried live on a SpaceX webcast. The launch followed more than two weeks of false starts and delays attributed to poor weather and unspecified technical issues, leading ground crews to roll the spacecraft back to its hangar before proceeding with Thursday’s flight. It came two weeks after China’s own robot spaceplane, known as the Shenlong, or “Divine Dragon,“ was launched on its third mission to orbit since 2020, adding a new twist to the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing in space. The Pentagon has disclosed few details about the X-37B mission, conducted by the US Space Force under the military’s National Security Space Launch program. #space #spacex #launch Subscribe to The Telegraph with our special offer: just £1 for 3 months. Start your free trial now: Get the latest headlines: and are websites of The Telegraph, the UK’s best-selling quality daily newspaper providing news and analysis on UK and world events, business, sport, lifestyle and culture.