All Experimental Spaceplane and Lifting-Body Test Vehicles

Experimental vehicles built to show that a winged or lifting-body shape can come back from space and steer to a chosen landing, rather than falling in a blunt capsule. The Martin X-23 PRIME of the United States Air Force flew a small lifting body on three suborbital flights in 1966 and 1967, the European Space Agency's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle flew a lifting-body re-entry experiment in 2015, and China's Shenlong is a small spaceplane test vehicle first seen in photographs slung under an H-6 bomber. A vehicle belongs here when its cited source calls it a spaceplane, a lifting body or a winged re-entry test vehicle. Capsule-shaped re-entry demonstrators, reusable crewed suborbital vehicles and sounding rockets have groups of their own in this subcategory.