X-37B Secret Mission

The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane has quietly passed the five-month mark on its latest secret mission in Earth orbit.
 

The X-37B looks a bit like a miniature space shuttle. The vehicle is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 15 feet (4.5 m) wide.

Flights of the spacecraft are conducted under the auspices of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, an organization that performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept-of-operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.

Sun increasing activity

A sunspot on the sun's eastern limb is crackling with powerful X-class solar flares.


Just-numbered AR1748 announced itself during the early hours of May 13th with an X1.7-class eruption (0217 UT), quickly followed by an X2.8-class flare (1609 UT) and an X3.2-class flare (0117 UT on May 14).

These are the strongest flares of the year so far, and they signal a significant increase in solar activity. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of more X-flares during the next 24 hours.

The explosions have also hurled coronal mass ejections (CMEs) into space. Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory are tracking the clouds: movie. 

The planet in the CME movie is Mercury. Although the CMEs appear to hit Mercury, they do not. In fact, no planets were in the line of fire. However, the CMEs appear to be on course to hit NASA's Epoxi and Spitzer spacecraft on May 15-16. 

When the action began on May 13th, the instigating sunspot (just numbered "AR1748") was hidden behind the sun's eastern limb, but now solar rotation is bringing the active region into view.

Ufo almost hits plane in Glasgow

A passenger aircraft above Scotland had a narrow miss with an unidentified flying object, a report by the UK Airprox Board has revealed.

The Airbus A320 was 4,000 feet above Glasgow when the incident occurred at the beginning of December.

The report reveals that an alarmed pilot alerted traffic controllers to the presence of 'something' passing just 300-400 feet under his plane.
The pilot logged the risk of collision with the object, which did not appear on radar, as 'high'.

A report by investigators was unable to establish what the object had been
The aircraft involved was approaching Glasgow airport on 2 December 2012.