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 betw