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The Chinese claim to have tested an EM Drive in space, there are rumors to the effect that the US military did the same on an X-37B flight, and academic and private industry flight tests are said to be in the planning stage.

The pace of the space testing effort by the academic physics community though may seem leisurely, but this is likely because academic physicists would want not incremental but definitive results. That requires building one or more fully instrumented and robust EM Drive models that are thoroughly ground tested in order to eliminate all possible technical faults, measurement errors, and alternative explanations for any thrust that might be observed in space.

Ideally, a space flight test also ought to resolve which theoretical physics explanation for EM Drive thrust is true and to provide guidance for how the design might be improved. As it is, there is no consensus as to how the EM Drive might work. The two best explanations in my layman's view are Unruh radiation or that the de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave theory of quantum mechanics is true. If so, the EM Drive would revolutionize modern physics.

In any event, if the EM Drive works, whomever first explains and proves up the physics can expect that their future will include an early morning call from the Nobel Committee in Stockholm.