US military’s X-37B robot spaceplane blasts off on secret mission aboard SpaceX rocket

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The US military’s secretive X-37B robot spaceplane has blasted off from Florida on its seventh mission, the first launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket capable of delivering it to a higher orbit than ever before. As on previous missions, there’s no one on board the reusable plane, which resembles a mini space shuttle and carries classified experiments. The Falcon Heavy, composed of three rocket cores strapped together, took off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral more than two weeks late because of technical issues. Three earlier countdowns were aborted due to poor weather and unspecified technical issues,...