The Associated Press
Florida Today
An Atlas V rocket carrying the X-37B mini-shuttle blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:03 p.m. on Tuesday December 11, 2012.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP/Florida Today) - A top-secret mini-space shuttle has blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
The Air Force launched the unmanned spacecraft Tuesday aboard an Atlas V rocket. Cloud coverage in the area threatened to scrub the launch all day, but the weather cleared just enough for an on-time liftoff at 1:03 p.m. at Launch Complex 41.
VIDEO: Watch the X-37B launch
The Atlas rocket and its Centaur upper stage performed flawlessly through the first 17 minutes and 34 seconds. The mission then switched into a classified mode, and an information blackout followed.
That's Standard Operating Procedure for classified military missions launched from Cape Canaveral.
It's the second flight for this original X-37B spaceplane. It circled the planet for seven months in 2010. A second X-37B spacecraft spent more than a year in orbit.
These mystery machines are about one-quarter the size of NASA's old space shuttles and they can land automatically on a runway.
The military isn't saying much if anything about this new secret mission. But one scientific observer, Harvard University's Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed.
The two previous secret flights were in roughly 200-plus-mile-high orbits.
The X-37B is capable of autonomous atmospheric reentry and landing, and the first two missions concluded on a runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Air Force officials say there is a chance the third mission will culminate with a landing on the shuttle runway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The service also is considering consolidating X-37B launch, landing and turn-around operations on Florida's Space Coast.
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