May 22, 2023: According to experts, a Chinese spacecraft that spent nine months in Earth's orbit may resemble an American spacecraft and have research or military purposes. Continue reading to know more!
China is now one of a select few countries that has successfully managed a reusable spacecraft, after landing a mysterious spacecraft that hovered nine months in Earth's orbit. Aerospace engineers have pieced together information from fragments to construct a picture of a spacecraft with potential for research as well as military uses, despite China not providing data about the spacecraft's design and operation.
Chinese state media outlet Xinhua stated that “the complete success of this experiment marks a significant breakthrough in our country's research on reusable spacecraft technology,” implying that Chinese scientists have created technology such as heat shields and landing gear specifically for recycling purposes.
The only other parties who have launched and recovered an orbiting reusable craft are China, NASA, and the US firms Boeing and SpaceX. The nine-month journey will likely serve as the reusable spacecraft's second test. China sent back a reusable experimental spacecraft in September 2020 after it had spent two days in orbit.
The spacecraft is likely identical to a US space-plane, the Boeing X-37B, according to Kevin Pollpeter, a senior research scientist at the Centre for Naval Analyses, a US government-funded research and analytical outfit in Arlington, Virginia. The X-37B's purpose is unknown, but when its military capabilities were made known in 2010, the Chinese government reportedly expressed alarm.
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Centre for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Boston, Massachusetts, concurs that Boeing's X-37B space-plane may have been a possible inspiration for China's experimental spacecraft.
According to McDowell, satellite sensing indicates that the object is a spacecraft because it is gliding and making a runway landing at the Lop Nur military installation in northwest China's Xinjiang region. Other reusable spacecraft, like SpaceX's Dragon capsule, are attached to launch rockets and use parachute landings to touch down.
The Chinese vehicle appears to be smaller than the X-37B. The Long March 2F rocket, which China used to launch its Shenzhou crewed space missions, is said to have launched the spacecraft last August from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China.
According to McDowell, the space-plane presumably weighs between 5 and 8 tonnes, which is considerably less than NASA's defunct space shuttles Columbia and Challenger, which carried out crewed flights, given that the launch vehicle's maximum cargo capacity is 8.4 tonnes.
The country may eventually deploy a larger space-plane for crewed trips, even though the current model is too tiny to transport crew members, according to McDowell.
There may have also been tests of releasing and capturing satellites while they were in orbit. The spacecraft reportedly released an object that was discovered in October, according to a report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think organisation in Washington, DC.
According to McDowell, who watches the spacecraft using data from the US Space Force, the object appeared to vanish from orbit in January before reappearing in March. He asserts that one potential explanation is that the object was seized by the spacecraft, which then transported it as cargo before releasing it once more. That would imply the spacecraft has cargo space, indicating it may be used to transport satellites and sensors.
The manoeuvre, which he claims might have been accomplished with a robotic arm, may have been a test run for maintaining and repairing satellites. “[The Chinese] have been working a lot with robot arms in other contexts, like the Chinese space station and other satellite servicing experiments,” claims McDowell. For instance, China used another satellite to remove a retired satellite from orbit last year.
The spacecraft's landing was featured in a Xinhua article that emphasised “the peaceful use of space”. McDowell points out that China already has a large number of surveillance satellites in orbit, negating the necessity for a spacecraft.
However, the military controls a big portion of China's space programme, therefore its space missions are frequently shrouded in secrecy, according to Pollpeter. Even if they are utilising it for something like satellite servicing and repair, it does not mean that it could not be utilised for more offensive or more military actions.