"In the early hours of Dec. 3, 2010, the X-37B became the first U.S. space vehicle to make an autonomous runway landing from orbit." I find this snippet far more interesting than the speculation about what the mission was about. Maybe I don't even <i>want</i> to know what it was doing, but it's good to see that the military is still pushing technology development. Also see: autonomous drones.
The Register has had some really good coverage of this plane over the past year:<p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/x37b_secret_launch_options/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/x37b_secret_launch_o...</a><p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/04/x37b_ski/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/04/x37b_ski/</a><p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/07/2nd_x37b_in_orbit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/07/2nd_x37b_in_orbit/</a>
I got excited by the title, as I misunderstood it to mean that we would actually see the images the drone took (the photos of the drone are still interesting though).
You can really see how tiny that thing is in the last two photos. I've never seen a photo of the Space Shuttle next to anything I can relate to, so I was amazed how enormous it was on a visit to the Houston Space Center. The only relevant photo I can find puts it atop a 747:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantis_on_Shuttle_Carrier_Aircraft.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantis_on_Shuttle_Carrie...</a>
So while the shuttle program was canceled with hundreds of flights left on their frame lifetimes, the military gets practically unlimited funding for their toys and wargames.