The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle mission 3 (OTV-3), the Air Force's unmanned, reusable space plane, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:24 a.m. Oct. 17 . "The 30th Space Wing and our mission partners, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, Boeing, and our base support contractors, have put countless hours of hard work into preparing for this landing and today we were able to see the culmination of that dedication," said Col Keith Balts, 30th Space Wing commander. "I'm extremely proud of our team for coming together to execute this third safe and successful landing. Everyone from our on console space operators to our airfield managers and civil engineers take pride in this unique mission and exemplify excellence during its execution." The OTV-3 conducted on-orbit experiments for 674 days during its mission, extending the total number of days spent on-orbit for the OTV program to 1367 days. "The landing of OTV-3 marks a hallmark event for the program" said the X-37B program manager. "The mission is our longest to date and we're pleased with the incremental progress we've seen in our testing of the reusable space plane. The dedication and hard work by the entire team has made us extremely proud." The X-37B is the newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft. Managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, the X-37B program performs risk
reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies. The Air Force is preparing to launch the fourth X-37B mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 2015.
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Louisiana X-37B Loud Boom - Mystery Solved NOT Solved -Scrap this hypothesis
SECRET X-37B Re-entry Path Over Shreveport, LA. 13OCT2014 -- Controlled Deceleration of the Craft Caused the Loud Boom!
Convenient cloudy overcast provided cover.
written 2340 JST, 16OCT2014 Tokyo
by Dirk Ross...LunarMeteoriteHunter, Tokyo
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| SECRET Boeing X-37B / NASA |
Since the mystery Loud Boom in the Shreveport, Louisiana area on Monday, October 13 at approximately 4:27 pm CDT, the event was felt and heard by thousands of residents in and around the city.and even over the state line into Texas some 35 miles away.
At the time of the event I started getting an unusual pattern of traffic indicating an event and then queries starting coming in. I immediately set off to post about the event in hopes of capturing reports from witnesses and to break the news story ahead of the media.. Minutes later I had the event confirmed via my network.
Since Shreveport has had past loud booms, one on October 15, 2012 being the most recent, it was first guessed that it might have been a munitions bunker again, but it wasn't. The Calumet plant was the next suspect because they had a prior loud boom; Calumet - negative! Pipelines, other possible factories, and the military bases no cause was found.
The next likely culprit, and my favorite at the time was a bolide, a large meteor, entering and fragmenting and this hypothesis lasted about two days for me.
After contacting Marc Fries, a meteor radar expert, asked him to search for possible radar debris evidence; Marc reported, "Nothing!". Meanwhile the National Weather Service, found a debris plume to the southeast of Shreveport. NWS called the artifact a debris cloud. Marc found the same artifact on the same radar 15 minutes PRIOR to the event, discounting radar debris field evidence.
This started me thinking about other possibilities. Was it a re-entry craft or vehicle, and what kind?
The Google Search bar quickly found the SECRET X-37B, "Space Drone", was scheduled to be back at any time soon and of course secret, but open sources gave the location as Vandenberg AFB in California, but I also found that there was talk of landing one "in the future" at KFC as a trial run.
Ok, I had my possible cause, looking more deeply into the bowels of Google and an IDEA hit me; check the Columbia return path! Well I didn't just then, but I found that the Columbia had first entered over land at San Francisco, California and was to land at Kennedy Flight Center. On Google Earth, I drew a line between the two locations, the line went right over Shreveport! I found the Columbia's path on an official map, the map showed the flight path right over the Shreveport, LA area.
This set me off on a search chase to find out more about the X-37B ......which I will write about later. ........More about the story to come................ to be continued after I have some sleep
The previous original post reports and prior updates can be read here -
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.jp/2014/10/shreveport-louisiana-loud-boom-meteor.html
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About me The Lunar Meteorite Hunter-
This website, The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News, 24/7. Utilizing the monitoring system, MBIQ "Meteor Bot Internet Query" bot. - Dirk Ross...Tokyo
2014 The Year of "CERTAIN Uncertainty" ™; Meteors, Asteroids, Comets, and MORE!!
