A top-secret Chinese space plane launched a mysterious object into Earth’s orbit

A top-secret Chinese space plane launched a mysterious object into Earth orbit just 372 miles above the surface.

The US space force is monitoring the situation, but the purpose of the object ejected on May 24 is unknown.

A Harvard astrophysicist first spotted the object and speculated that it could be a subsatellite deployment or a piece of hardware ejected before the spacecraft completes its mission and leaves orbit.

The craft – named Shenlong after a spiritual dragon from Chinese mythology – launched last December and has since been spotted releasing several objects into orbit, with some sending strong signals over North America.

China has been very secretive about the space plane, only describing the purpose as providing “technical support for the peaceful use of space.”

The craft launched one day after the US cleared the flight of its “spy” plane, which the head of the US space force said was “no accident”.

“It’s probably not a coincidence that they’re trying to match us with the timing and sequence of this,” said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief of space operations.

And while the Chinese space plane has since fallen under the radar, the mysterious object is raising concerns.

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics first spotted the object and shared his findings on X.

“This object could be a deployment of subsatellites, or it could be a piece of hardware discarded before the end of the mission and deorbit (the first flight of the spacecraft did something similar),” McDowell said.

“It will be interesting to see if the plane maneuvers or lands soon.”

Amateur astronomer Scott Tilley was watching a Chinese space plane in December when it ejected six objects that emitted signals over North America.

Tilley said he believed the signals went to a ground station or ship near British Columbia, Canada, where he lives.

“When a space plane passes me, it only transmits on a certain flyby trajectory that seems to favor a location south to southwest of me.

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“That is, there are no signals in the higher altitude passes above me, but in the ocean-hugging passes to my southwest, all my sightings of the object have occurred.”

Tilley teamed up with a group in Switzerland that specializes in optical-band space tracking, and the collaboration has been keeping a close eye on the plane since its Dec. 15 launch.

The Chinese space plane is currently on its third mission, and US officials have said its capabilities are somewhat similar to the US X-37B, which launched on December 29, 2023.

The launch followed more than two weeks of false starts and delays attributed to bad weather and unspecified technical problems, leading the ground crew to return the spacecraft to its hangar.

This comes two weeks after China’s space plane took off on its third mission into orbit starting in 2020.

The American Boeing-made vehicle, roughly the size of a small bus and resembling a miniature space shuttle, is built to deploy various payloads and conduct technology experiments on years-long orbital flights.

The planned duration of the X-37B’s final mission has not been disclosed, but is likely to last until June 2026 or later, given the prevailing pattern of progressively longer flights.