Space airplane

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The U.S. Air Force is a bit vague on details, but the gist of the plan is this: Sometime in December, an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket is to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying a prototype spaceship called the X-37B into orbit.
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X-37 was a NASA program until 2004, when President George W. Bush redirected the civilian space flight program from microgravity research in low-Earth orbit, which has been the focus of the space shuttle and International Space Station programs, to outer space exploration.
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In 2006, the X-37A was dropped from beneath the wing of a jet carrier aircraft for a first atmospheric test flight.
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