After nearly six months in a low-Earth orbit, China’s mysterious experimental reusable spacecraft Shenlong appears to have released an object 600km (372 miles) above the ground.
However it still does not seem that the space plane has deployed any operational satellites as it did on its second mission.
The unknown object was ejected from Shenlong on May 25 and detected by US Space Force space domain awareness teams. Catalogued as object 59884, it has been orbiting Earth since then at an altitude of around 600km – similar to the plane.
But it has not made any kind of manoeuvre since its release, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space activity tracker at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
“It may just be an inert piece of hardware,” McDowell said on Tuesday.
Canada-based amateur astronomer Scott Tilley, who helped Nasa find one of its long-lost satellites, said neither the object nor the plane had emitted any new signals since the release.
The current flight is the third one for Shenlong, which took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert on December 14, 2023.
Often seen as a counterpart of the US military space plane X-37B, there has been very little information released about Shenlong’s size or capabilities.
It made its maiden flight in 2020, which lasted just two days. Then in August 2022, Shenlong set off on its second mission, which lasted nine months. During this mission, a subsatellite was reportedly ejected and recaptured a couple of times by the plane to test related technologies.
After Shenlong’s third launch in December, space activity trackers suggested that it released at least five objects into low-Earth orbit, two of which were thought to be satellites since they were giving off radio signals similar to the plane’s signals. But the objects were mostly likely debris of the Long March rocket, which sent Shenlong to its initial orbit, Tilley said.
“Most, if not all, of them have probably re-entered Earth’s atmosphere,” Tilley said.
Not much is known about how this third mission has been going, except that the space plane raised its orbit from around 300km to 600km in late January – where it has remained.
Chinese space authorities have not revealed details of the Shenlong’s latest mission, or when it will return. All that has been said was contained in a brief report released by state media just after the launch.
“It’s going to operate in orbit for a period of time before returning to its intended landing site in China,” state news agency Xinhua said in the launch report.
“Reusable technology verification and space science experiments will be carried out to provide technical support for the peaceful use of space.”
