Boeing X37B, US Top Secret Spy Plane lands after 674 days in Orbit

This June 16, 2012 file image from video made available by the Vandenberg Air Force Base shows an infrared view of the Boeing X-37B unmanned spacecraft landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base. 

The purpose of the U.S. military's space plane is classified, only fueling speculation about why it has been orbiting Earth for nearly two years on this, its third mission. 

The plane is expected to land this week at a Southern California Air Force base. 

Credit: AP Photo /Vandenberg Air Force Base

A top-secret space plane landed Friday at an Air Force base on the Southern California coast.

The plane spent nearly two years circling Earth on a classified mission. Known as the Boeing X-37B, it resembles a mini space shuttle.

It safely touched down at 9:24 a.m. Friday, officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base said.

Just what the plane was doing during its 674 days in orbit has been the subject of sometimes spectacular speculation.

Several experts have theorized it carried a payload of spy gear in its cargo bay.

Other theories sound straight out of a James Bond film, including that the spacecraft would be able to capture the satellites of other nations or shadow China's space lab.

In a written release announcing the return of the craft, the Air Force only said it had been conducting "on-orbit experiments."

The Boeing X-37B program has been an orphan of sorts, bouncing since its inception in 1999 between several federal agencies, NASA among them. It now resides under the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office.

The plane that landed Friday is one of two built by Boeing. This is the program's third mission, and began in December 2012.

The plane stands 9 1/2 feet tall and is just over 29 feet long, with a wingspan under 15 feet. It weighs 11,000 pounds and has solar panels that unfurl to charge its batteries once in orbit.

The Air Force said it plans to launch the fourth Boeing X-37B mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, next year.

NASA Earth Observatory: King Fire in California, False-Colour Infrared image

On Sept. 19, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite captured these images of the King fire in Eldorado National Forest. 

In the false-colour image, burned forest appears red; unaffected forests are green; cleared forest is beige; and smoke is blue. 

As of Sept. 23, the blaze had charred 36,320 hectares (89,571 acres).

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

New species of fox found in California

New species of fox found in California

A subspecies of red fox (Vulpes vulpes) living in California's Sacramento Valley - long believed to be a non-native pest - is in fact native to the area, scientists say.

For almost 100 years the red foxes were thought to have escaped from fur farms and hunting parties in the 1900s, but they're actually genetically different than non-native foxes elsewhere in California, The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday.

They are also genetically distinct from the Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) native across most of California, the newspaper said.

Ben Sacks, a biology professor at the University of California-Davis, says genetic testing shows the subspecies, which he calls the Sacramento Valley red fox, is unique to lowland areas north of the American River and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

"We can now say that the foxes of the Sacramento Valley are native to California," Sacks said.

"The fact that the evidence is pointing toward it as a native species -- and a native species that we didn't know about -- is kind of an amazing development," said Armand Gonzales, a wildlife program manager at the California Department of Fish and Game. "That doesn't happen very often."

NASA study: California Lakes warming quicker than expected

New U.S. scientific findings suggest that climate change may be affecting aquatic environments faster and sooner than the atmosphere.

Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., came to conclusions after noticing that Lake Tahoe, Clear Lake and four other big lakes in Northern California and Nevada are heating up faster than the surrounding atmosphere, The Sacramento Bee reported Sunday.

The newspaper said the researchers tapped satellite sensor temperature data compiled over 18 years in what is believed to be the first time that long-range lake surface temperatures have been dissected. What the data reportedly showed is that the lakes' water temperature rose two times faster, on average, than the regional air temperatures.

"It was a big surprise to see that," Philipp Schneider, the study's lead author and a post-doctoral research scientist at the NASA lab, told the Bee. "If it turns out they're actually changing faster than the air temperature, then there's a whole new phenomenon going on here.

The lake ecosystems are going to be very much affected, especially because the trend we observed seems to be quite rapid."