America’s X-37B robot spaceplane blasts off from Florida on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for secretive mission – two weeks after China launched its own ‘Divine Dragon’ space drone

The US military's secret X-37B robotic space plane took off from Florida on Thursday evening on its seventh mission, the first launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that could take it into a higher orbit than ever before.

The Falcon Heavy, consisting of three liquid-fueled rocket cores bonded together, roared off its launch pad from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in a spectacular launch broadcast live on a SpaceX webcast.

The launch followed more than two weeks of false starts and delays attributed to bad weather and unspecified technical problems, forcing ground crews to roll the spacecraft back to its hangar before continuing with Thursday's flight.

It came two weeks after China's own robotic spaceplane, the Shenlong, or 'Divine Dragon', launched on its third mission into orbit since 2020, putting a new twist on the growing rivalry between the US and China in space .

The Pentagon has released few details about the X-37B mission, conducted by the U.S. Space Force under the military's National Security Space Launch program.

The Falcon Heavy, consisting of three liquid-fueled rocket cores bonded together, roared off its launch pad with a spectacular liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

The Pentagon has released few details about the X-37B mission (pictured), conducted by the US Space Force under the military's National Security Space Launch program.

The Boeing-built vehicle, about the size of a small bus and resembling a miniature space shuttle, is built to deploy various payloads and conduct technology experiments on years of orbital flight.

At the end of its mission, the craft descends back through the atmosphere to land on a runway, just like an airplane.

It has flown six previous missions since 2010, the first five of which were launched into orbit by Atlas V rockets operated by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and most recently, in May 2020, atop a Falcon 9 booster, provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Thursday's mission marked the first launch aboard SpaceX's more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, which can carry payloads even heavier than the X-37B further into space, possibly into geosynchronous orbit, more than 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above the earth.

The X-37B, also called the Orbital Test Vehicle, was previously limited to flights in low Earth orbit, at altitudes below 2,000 kilometers.

The Pentagon has not said how high the spaceplane will fly this time. But last month, the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office said in a statement that the mission, designated by the Space Force as USSF-52, would include tests of “new orbital regimes, experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies.”

At the end of its mission, the craft descends back through the atmosphere to land on a runway, just like an airplane

The X-37B, also called the Orbital Test Vehicle, was previously limited to flights in low Earth orbit, at altitudes below 2,000 kilometers

Such comments have led industry analysts and amateur space trackers to speculate that the has received increasing interest.

“Maybe this thing is headed to the moon and releases a payload,” says Bob Hall, director of space traffic monitoring company COMSPOC, which analyzes the trajectories of orbital objects. The closer the spacecraft flies to the moon, the more difficult it may be to return safely to Earth.

Thursday's webcast, which SpaceX said was shortened at the military's request, left unclear whether the X-37B reached its intended destination in space.

But the company later posted photos of the launch on social media platform X with the headline: “Falcon Heavy launches USSF-52 into orbit.”

The X-37B is also conducting a NASA experiment to study how plant seeds are affected by long-term exposure to the harsh environment of space radiation. The ability to grow crops in space has major implications for feeding astronauts on future long-term missions to the moon and Mars.

China's equally secretive Shenlong was launched into space on December 14 by a Long March 2F rocket, a launch system less powerful than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and likely limited to delivering payloads to low Earth orbit.

Still, Space Force Gen. B. Chance Saltzman told reporters at an industry conference earlier this month that he expected China to launch Shenlong around the same time as the X-37B flight, in what he suggested was a competitive move.

“These are two of the most viewed objects in orbit while in orbit. It's probably not a coincidence that they're trying to match us in terms of timing and sequencing of this,” Saltzman said, according to comments published in Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The planned duration of the final X-37B mission has not been made public, but is likely to last until June 2026 or later, given the prevailing pattern of increasingly longer flights.

The last mission remained in orbit for more than two years before landing in November 2022.