David Axe has posted an interesting piece on Wired’s Danger Room, Grounded NASA Space Plane Poised for Comeback? about the X-34 possibly being resurrected.
Last week, NASA contractors moved the two, 59-foot-long X-34s from open storage to a test pilot school in California’s Mojave Desert. There, workers from Orbital Sciences, the X-34’s original builder, will inspect the two robotic rocketships with an eye to flying them again. If the X-34s have held up since their 2001 parking, they could help boost America’s tiny-but-growing arsenal of super-fast, inexpensive, reusable spacecraft.
In related news carried by SpaceFlightNow, it looks like the X-37B’s mission may be coming to an end.