A winged Chinese spacecraft mirroring the design of the US military’s X-37B has finally been revealed in an unclassified defense assessment released on Monday, after being captured in orbit by a passing commercial imaging satellite.
How the Chinese Spaceplane Resembles the US X-37B
The imagery, captured by a satellite owned by a company called Vantor, known as Maxar in 2024, shows a reusable craft outfitted with distinct delta wings, payload bay doors, a dark heat shield, and a rear-mounted service module equipped with power-generating solar arrays. This architecture shares a striking visual and structural fidelity with the X-37B spaceplane operated by the US Space Force. Both vehicles rely on a similar operational profile: lifting off vertically inside the payload shroud of a conventional rocket, functioning on orbit as an unpiloted satellite resembling a miniature Space Shuttle, and eventually reentering Earth’s atmosphere to execute an autonomous runway landing for ground refurbishment.
then executed a rerendezvous with the subsat on Sep 10 and a recapture on Sep 13. This analysis is based on USSF GP data. USSF also cataloged an additional object 24J on about Sep 10, but with no orbit data; I think this was a mistake and is a duplicate of object 24H.
— https://x.com/planet4589/status/2102830609630425569
What the Defense Intelligence Agency Assessment Reveals About Orbital Missions
Published within an unclassified threat assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the high-resolution photograph confirms configurations previously only hinted at via lower-resolution captures and a 2024 disclosure by a US Space Force official in South Korea. Despite the newly public imagery, the DIA report offers limited operational insight into the specific tasks performed by the craft during its extended flights. China has executed four separate spaceplane missions since 2020, with durations stretching up to nine months. The fourth mission remains actively in orbit following its launch in February. It remains unconfirmed whether the Chinese inventory consists of a single spaceplane or multiple flight-ready hulls.
Why Spaceplanes Outperform Traditional Satellites in Low-Earth Orbit
The DIA report highlights that the “enhanced maneuverability” of winged spaceplanes makes them “more suitable for certain missions than traditional satellites.” To date, Chinese orbital operations have remained restricted to low-Earth orbit at altitudes spanning a few hundred miles. In contrast, American X-37B deployments have demonstrated greater orbital flexibility; one Space Force mission climbed to an altitude of more than 24,000 miles before utilizing atmospheric aerobraking maneuvers to set up for a controlled runway touchdown. While the US Space Force rotates two X-37B hulls—including a mission that spanned two-and-a-half years—the vast majority of those American orbital payloads and onboard activities remain strictly classified.
