An uncrewed, solar-powered military plane has just broken its spaceflight-duration record, having now spent more than 719 days in orbit around Earth.
Known as the X-37B, the space plane belongs to the US Air Force, and this is its fifth mission, Orbital Test Vehicle 5 (OTV-5). However, exactly what it's achieving on its missions remains classified.
On Monday, the plane broke the record set by the previous mission, OTV-4, which stayed in the air for a duration of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes.
OTV-5 beat that record at 10:43 UTC (06:43 EDT) on August 26. We're now nearly at the end of day 719 of the plane being in orbit.
So what's it doing up there?
NOYFB. ;-) To read more, click here.