On December 11, the Orbital Test Vehicle 3 (OTV-3), an X-37B spaceplane, was launched aboard an Atlas 5. The flight will be the second for this particular vehicle and the third for the model overall. The X-37B has the capability to remain in orbit for hundreds of days before returning to land on a runway. The duration or purpose of this particular flight is not known, as the vehicle and its mission is classified by the US Air Force.
Watch the launch below:
















































































































![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)



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