Air Force wings in orbit

摘要

The X-37B programme is led now by the US Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, itself a part of the Air Force Research Laboratory responsible for several space related projects. Beginning life in the 1990s as a venture between Boeing's Phantom Works and the Air Force Research Laboratory, the X-37 was preceded by the X-40A, adopted by NASA in 1999 and modified into a potentially reusable space-plane. When NASA abandoned the X-37A concept the Air Force and other government agencies took it over in 2004 and, under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), produced the 120% scaled-up X-37B.