spacetoday.net: Shuttle hangar to be used for X-37B

Posted: Mon, Jan 6, 2014, 5:56 AM ET (1056 GMT)
X-37B OTV-2 landing (US Air Force)

Boeing will lease a shuttle-era hangar at the Kennedy Space Center to serve as a base of operations for the secretive X-37B military spaceplane, the company announced Friday. Boeing will make use of the Orbiter Processing Facility 1 (OPF-1) at the center to help "efficiently land, recover, refurbish, and re-launch" the X-37B. The uncrewed vehicle, two of which have been built, has launched three times from Cape Canaveral, and landed twice at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; it is still in orbit on its third mission, more than a year after launch. Local officials said the deal could bring hundreds of jobs to first refurbish OPF-1 for the X-37B and, later, for operations there. Boeing has already agreed to lease OPF-3 to assemble and test its planned CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft.