OTV-5 was launched on September 7, 2017 on the medium-sized Falcon 9 missile from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral (USA). Specialists specially tried to launch before the hurricane Irma reaches the cosmodrome.

The flight targets of the Boeing X-37 are classified, but it is assumed that the shuttle is designed to test the destruction of space satellites, and one of its purposes is to test the economic effectiveness of such actions compared with the missile liquidation means.

Boeing X-37 is able to go into orbit and land in the same way as the space shuttle. The length of the reusable orbiter is 8.83 meters, which is four times smaller than that of the Space Shuttle, the wing span is 4.6 meters. At the disposal of the Pentagon there are two Boeing X-37s, the launches of each of them alternate.

The first launch of the spacecraft Boeing X-37 took place on April 22, 2010. And the penultimate flight, which ended in May 2017, became the longest - it lasted 718 days - almost 2 years.

In total for 7 years in a near-earth orbit the Boeing X-37s spent 2,085 days.

It is noteworthy that the previous four launches of the Boeing X-37 were made on the Atlas 5 rocket of ULA (a joint venture of the aerospace corporations Lockheed Martin and Boeing), which is the main competitor of SpaceX in the US market. Previously, ULA was the only company to which the US military department trusted the launch of military vehicles. This is written by the newspaper "Today".