China has managed to safely land a mysterious reusable spacecraft that spent 276 days in orbit.
The uncrewed spaceship touched down on Monday on the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. While little is understood about this craft, it’s drawing comparisons to the U.S. Air Force’s Boeing X-37B spaceplane.
“The success of the experiment marks a very important breakthrough in China’s research on reusable spacecraft technologies, which can provide more convenient and reasonably priced round-trip methods for the peaceful use of space in the long run,”
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, a significant defense contractor in China, said in a statement in Xinhua, China’s official state news agency.
Secret Spacecraft
China hasn’t released any pictures of—or perhaps a name for—its reusable spacecraft. Nevertheless, a report within the South China Morning Post cites deductions from experts claiming that the craft could possibly be used for intelligence-gathering, and that it might contain advanced sensors.
The spacecraft reportedly released an object into orbit during a mission last yr. There was speculation that the unknown object was either a satellite or a smaller craft used to look at the reusable mothership.
Competition with the X-37B?
China isn’t the one country sending mysterious reusable craft into orbit. The U.S. X-37B is boosted into space by rockets, then re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and lands as a spaceplane.
The winged X-37B carries each classified and unclassified payloads. The spacecraft could make orbital changes to thwart observers and keep its missions temporarily secret.
A flight of the X-37B in 2022—dubbed OTV-6—deployed NASA experiments that tested the results of space on thermal control coatings, printed electronics, and radiation shielding materials. The materials spent greater than three years in orbit, after which NASA scientists made use of the information collected throughout the project.
One other NASA experiment on the flight looked into the effect of long-duration space exposure on seeds. Scientists investigated the seeds’ resistance and susceptibility to space environment-unique stresses—notably, radiation. The knowledge gathered during this experiment may eventually be used for space crop production, which could possibly be a part of future interplanetary missions and contribute to the establishment of permanently inhabited bases in space.
“The X-37B continues to push the boundaries of experimentation, enabled by an elite government and industry team behind the scenes,” Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, DAF Rapid Capabilities Office’s X-37B Program Director, said in a news release after the conclusion of the mission:
“The power to conduct on-orbit experiments and produce them home safely for in-depth evaluation on the bottom has proven beneficial for the Department of the Air Force and scientific community. The addition of the service module on OTV-6 allowed us to host more experiments than ever before.”