After one year and 10 months in orbit, the mysterious U.S. military space plane X-37B will finally return to Earth Tuesday from its top secret mission

The X-37B is a fully robotic space plane also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle. It will land at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

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The space plane has been orbiting Earth since December 2012 and has been in space for a whopping 671 days.

According to Col. Keith Baits, 30th Space Wing commander, Team Vandenberg has been gearing up for the return of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle. The team is ready to carry out safe landing procedures for the third time.

The spacecraft will land autonomously since it's designed for this specific purpose.

The U.S. Air Force has two other X-37B space planes in its fleet. These vehicles have been carrying out top secret missions since 2010. It's still not clear what purpose those flights have but are certainly for gathering classified military information.

The space plane that will return to Earth is called the Orbital Test Vehicle 3 (OTV-3). It was launched December 11, 2012 and placed into orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket.

OTV-3 is the third X-37B spacecraft launched by the U.S. Air Force. The program's first vehicle, OTV-1, launched in April 2010 stayed in orbit for 225 days.

The second X-37B spacecraft was launched in March 2011 and landed in June 2012 after 469 days in space.

OTV-3 is regarded as the best spacecraft in its series and has surpassed all endurance tests. All missions are supervised by the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.

The mission control center is located at the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado.

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