Robotic space shuttle returns to earth

The U.S. military's unmanned X-37B robotic space shuttle returned from orbit at 5:48 a.m. in California (1248 GMT) from a secretive 15-month test flight on Saturday (June 16).

The miniature space plane, also known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2, or OTV-2, touched down at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, 130 miles (209 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

It was only the second U.S. vehicle to make an autonomous runway landing from space.

The military, which took over the program from NASA, says it is using them to learn how to quickly and inexpensively refurbish reusable spaceships for flight.

It is not known if it carried anything in its cargo bay, which is about the size of a pickup truck bed.

The vehicles look like miniature versions of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiters, with a similar shape and a payload bay for cargo and experiments.

The X-37B due to fly this fall is the vehicle that inaugurated the program in 2010.