As you read these lines, there are not one, but two mysterious spaceships orbiting Earth that we don’t know what they’re doing there. We only know when they went into orbit, we know their sizes, and we also know that one belongs to the United States and the other was launched from China.

X-37B is the name of the American space plane, this is one of the few details about it. I call it a space plane because it has wings and turns, gliding to the landing strip, even if launched by a rocket (Atlas V or Falcon 9); we could also call it a space shuttle since it shuttles between Earth and space, but I also don’t want to confuse it with the former US space shuttles because the X-37B has no crew on board.

Rumor has it that there are two such machines built by Boeing for the US Air Force

No way, given that it’s much smaller than previous space shuttles, it’s actually small enough to fit in the shuttle’s hold (we know its dimensions indirectly because we know it fits, even with wings, in protective cone of rockets from which it has been launched so far).

There are two such ships rumored to exist, built by Boeing for the US Air Force and later transferred to the Space Force (a newly created branch of the US military), but both were never US ships in space.

This we know for sure, since you can’t hide an orbital rocket launch, so we at least know when the X-37Bs were launched, as well as when they returned to earth (surprisingly, we have photos and even video of the vehicles landing ). The X-37B is now on its 6th mission, launched on May 17, 2020 by an Atlas V rocket, also the longest and most complex mission, the previous record being 780 days spent by the X-37B in orbit. .

I say difficult because this time NASA is also conducting two experiments aboard the vehicle, and this is the first time a service module has been attached to the back of the X-37B to expand the range of experiments it can conduct. This is in addition to the usual experiments carried out on past missions housed in the hold of the vehicle, which could be exposed to the conditions of space by opening the two doors at the top (there are images taken from the ground by amateur astronomers that seem to confirm that’s because no matter how secret the mission is, it’s impossible to hide a 30-foot-long object in low Earth orbit).

There is much less information from China

There is much less information from China. The September 2020 launch of the Changzheng-2F rocket (a type of rocket used infrequently, almost exclusively for Shenzhou manned capsule launches) apparently launched China’s first space plane, which returned to the runway at the Lop Nur military base just two days later. one of the longest runways in the world.

But we don’t have any images, neither the missile launch nor the mystery car. It is only known that Changzheng-2F can lift up to 8.4 tons into low Earth orbit and that the upper stage has a diameter of 4.2 meters. On August 4, 2022, another launch of the Changzheng-2F rocket sent China’s second spacecraft into orbit (or the same one from last year on its second mission, we can’t know exactly how things are going).

What is certain is that more than 2 weeks after launch, the spacecraft is still in orbit (perigee 346 km, apogee 593 km, orbital inclination 50 degrees – details we know from observations by amateur astronomers, as well as from public data provided by the Space US forces). I said we don’t have photos of the secret plane, but the Chinese still missed something: the two halves of the vehicle’s protective cone, which separated shortly after launch, apparently crashed in a residential area and were… put on display in a school yard.

By the time people realized what they were talking about, the images had gone online, where they are known to be impossible to remove. You can see how the protective cone has been modified slightly from the stock version to accommodate the car’s fenders. When will the Chinese spacecraft land? That remains to be seen, with amateur astronomers watching for any changes in the craft’s orbit and a constellation of commercial Earth observation satellites keeping their cameras on Lop Noor, which is no doubt also of interest to US reconnaissance satellites, as for detection of any signs that may precede landing.

Is the Chinese space plane a copy of the American X-37B, just like the Buran shuttle, which was supposed to be a copy of the American shuttle? perhaps. Can these two planes be used as weapons in the event of a military conflict? Unlikely, because, as with the space shuttles, it would be impractical at all.

They are, most likely, two military platforms for experiments that are secretly carried out in space (various sensors for future satellites, new generation fuels, studying the behavior of certain materials in space conditions; there were even satellites launched from the X-37B). ), but it is also possible that these machines are equipped with spying equipment.

Their mission remains shrouded in mystery, but the fact that they are reusable orbiters that return to Earth on a landing strip makes them fascinating flying machines, in addition to being part of the military’s special forces.