The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a reusable unmanned spacecraft. It is boosted into space by a launch vehicle, then re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and lands as a spaceplane.
The X-37 is operated by the United States Air Force for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies.[4] It is a 120%-scaled derivative of the earlier Boeing X-40.
The X-37 began as a NASA project in 1999, before being transferred to the U.S. Department of Defense in 2004, and there have been five X-37 missions so far:
- The first X-37 flight was on 7 April 2006, at Edwards Air Force Base, California; it returned to Earth on 3 December 2010
- The second X-37 was launched on 5 March 2011, with the mission designation USA-226; it returned to Earth on 16 June 2012
- The third X-37 mission, USA-240, launched on 11 December 2012 and landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base on 17 October 2014
- The fourth X-37 mission, USA-261, launched on 20 May 2015, and returned on 7 May 2017 at Kennedy Space Center
- The fifth X-37 mission launched on 7 September 2017 from Kennedy Space Center using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
Sources: YouTube, Wikipedia