TRUMP'S Space Force has released the first-ever picture taken from the US's top-secret X-37B spy plane.
The winged, robotic spacecraft has been shrouded in mystery since it first launched in 2010, with very limited info about its true purpose in the public domain.
The new, military-issue photo shows the Earth hanging in space like a blue marble, snapped whilst the craft orbited hundreds of miles out in the black.
The camera was trained on our planet, so the picture reveals very little of the spacecraft itself.
The caption accompanying the picture reads: “An X-37B onboard camera, used to ensure the health and safety of the vehicle, captures an image of Earth while conducting experiments in a highly elliptical orbit in 2024.
"As part of the X-37B’s seventh mission, the vehicle executed a series of first-of-its-kind maneuvers, called aerobraking, to safely change its orbit using minimal fuel.”
There was no clarification on the "experiments" X-37B is conducting.
But Frank Kendall, Secretary of the Air Force, did hail the "aerobreaking" tests as a "novel and efficient" breakthrough.
X-37B is the smallest and lightest orbital spaceplane ever.
It is boosted into space by a rocket launch vehicle before detaching, and landing down on earth as a spaceplane.
This reusability is its star feature.
X-37B is only the third-ever reusable spacecraft, after the Soviet Buran shuttle and the US Space Shuttle - although the latter never tested this capability.
The idea for it was born as a Nasa project in 1999, before being transferred to the US Department of Defense.
The official Air Force statement says the plane services "an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, uncrewed space test platform for the US Air Force."
However, space enthusiasts have long speculated its true purpose is for spying or developing space-based weapons - claims that The Pentagon has been forced to deny.
In particular, it has been suggested the spacecraft has been used to spy on China's Tiangong-1 space station.
The Space Force launched X-37B on its first orbital mission 2010.
Details of its subsequent movements are only known thanks to the work of amateur sleuths and satellite enthusiasts.
Its current mission - the fourth flight for the version two - launched in December 2023 aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket.
This was the first launch from such a powerful rocket, and the spacecraft has been propelled into higher orbits than previously.
Officially, the mission involves radiation experiments and space exploration, but the unusual orbit path and secrecy of the programme have fuelled speculation.
SpaceX also withheld all footage from the second stage after launch, adding further intrigue.
Musk's space firm has admitted that X-37B is carving out new paths, and hinted it may even be breaking beyond geostationary orbit.
This is the distance approximately 36,000km above earth where satellites appear from the ground to be fixed in the sky, because they orbit at the same speed as the Earth spins.
Whilst the new photo is the first official in-orbit release, a two-second clip from the onboard camera was leaked once before - and enthusiasts believe this was an accident.
Somebody got hold of the footage and posted to X in December 2023 with the caption: "Sneaky! But I got it. During the SpaceX UDDF-52 launch broadcast they showed a two second clip of X-37B OTV-7 with the service module during deployment."
An open-source intelligence account reposted the footage and said: "Boeing has released some deployment footage of the x-37, though until today, images from the spacecraft have remained completely illusive."
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