The top secret spacecraft of China was released into orbit around three months ago. It has released an object with quite a suspense. The object is currently circling the Earth behind it, SpaceNews reports.
Not a lot of information is available about China’s “reusable experimental spacecraft,” except that it was released from a Long March 2F rocket back in August. We don’t know why it was sent there, what it looks like, or what objects it was carrying during launch.
The object was released between October 24 and October 31, as figured by the tracking data being analyzed by the US Space Force’s 18th pace Defense Squadron.
Agencies are only employing guess work to make sense of this development as no concrete information is available. According to Harvard astronomer and space tracker Jonathan McDowell, it “may be a service module, possibly indicating an upcoming deorbit burn.”
Based on the size and weight of payloads Long March rockets usually carry, China’s mysterious space plane seems to resemble the Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane, which is equally under cover and at the moment, is on its sixth mission.
It is still unanticipated when the Chinese model will come back to Earth, but given recent activity at the Lop Nur base in Xinjiang suggests, it may land there in the near future, according to the report.
It’s quite a conundrum to understand the new development for China’s secretive spacecraft. Nevertheless, it raises the possibility of a renewed interest in spaceplanes, a potentially economical and sustainable way to launch payloads into orbit.