Boeing X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle

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:

  1. The first X-37 flight was on 7 April 2006, at Edwards Air Force Base, California; it returned to Earth on 3 December 2010
  2. The second X-37 was launched on 5 March 2011, with the mission designation USA-226; it returned to Earth on 16 June 2012
  3. The third X-37 mission, USA-240, launched on 11 December 2012 and landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base on 17 October 2014
  4. The fourth X-37 mission, USA-261, launched on 20 May 2015, and returned on 7 May 2017 at Kennedy Space Center
  5. The fifth X-37 mission launched on 7 September 2017 from Kennedy Space Center using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

Sources: YouTube, Wikipedia

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