Boeing X-37

X-37
The sixth X-37B mission with a Service module placed inside its payload fairing
General information
Type	Uncrewed spaceplane
National origin	United States
Manufacturer	Boeing
Status	In service 6 spaceflights completed 7th spaceflight underway
Primary user	X-37A: NASA/DARPA X-37B: United States Space Force/​Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office[1]
Number built	X-37A: 1 X-37B: 2
History
Introduction date	22 April 2010 (first spaceflight)
First flight	7 April 2006 (first drop test)
Developed from	Boeing X-40

The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a reusable robotic 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 Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, in collaboration with United States Space Force,^[1] for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies. It is a 120-percent-scaled derivative of the earlier Boeing X-40. The X-37 began as a NASA project in 1999, before being transferred to the United States Department of Defense in 2004. Until 2019, the program was managed by Air Force Space Command.^[2]

An X-37 first flew during a drop test in 2006; its first orbital mission was launched in April 2010 on an Atlas V rocket, and returned to Earth in December 2010. Subsequent flights gradually extended the mission duration, reaching 780 days in orbit for the fifth mission, the first to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. The sixth mission launched on an Atlas V on 17 May 2020 and concluded on 12 November 2022, reaching a total of 908 days in orbit.^[3] The seventh mission launched on 28 December 2023 on a Falcon Heavy rocket, entering a highly elliptical high Earth orbit.^[4][5]