On Wednesday, an enigmatic United States Air Force space plans to make an impressive fourth trip into Orbit. Just like with the other initial space trips, the Air Force declined to give more information regarding the unmanned X-37B spacecraft. The space vessel resembles the smaller version of retired space shuttles belonging to NASA.

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A spokesman for the Air Force, Capt. Christopher M. Hoyler, said that the current test mission furthers the development of operations concept for reusable space vehicles. The captain also said that this mission fine tuned the technical parameters for a reusable and affordable space vehicle, according to NY Times.

Boeing is the manufacturer of the two X-37B spacecrafts belonging to the Air Force. The maiden one launched in April five years ago. It set off speculation over its purposes. It is said that some quarters even went ahead to suggest that the craft had one or two things to do with space weapons, something the Pentagon denied. The first craft landed in December of that year. Even NASA denied that the space crafts were being tested for space weapons or defense purposes.

The second space vessel was launched two years after the first one. The first craft made its second flight in December 2012 and returned 674 days later, that is, October 2014. The Air Force did not say which of the two space vessels was packed inside an Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla launchpad as stated by Smithosonian.

On Wednesday, at 10:45 am, a four hour launch window will open while weather forecasts indicate a 60 percent chance of having favorable weather. The Air Force had already made about plenty of experiments; however, this experiment has emphasized on an improved version of electric thrusters.

Unlike the traditional thrusters that employ chemical reactions, electric thrusters are highly efficient and accelerate charged ions through their electric fields.

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