“It may just be inert hardware,” McDowell said Tuesday.
Scott Tilley, a Canadian amateur astronomer who helped NASA find the long-lost moon, said neither the object nor the plane had emitted any new signals since the release.
Shenlong is often seen as a similar aircraft to the U.S. military’s X-37B spaceplane, but little information has been released about its size or capabilities.
After Shenlong’s third launch in December, space activity trackers said it had released at least five objects into low orbit, two of which were thought to be satellites because they emitted radio signals similar to the craft’s. But Tilly said most of the objects were likely remnants of the Long March rocket that had put Shenlong into its original orbit.
“It’s likely that most, if not all, of it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere,” Tilley said.
Not much is known about how this third mission is going, other than that the spaceplane increased its orbit from about 300 km to 600 km in late January, and remains at that altitude today.
China’s space agency has not released any details about Shenlong’s latest mission or when it will return, with the only information released being contained in a short report published by state media shortly after the launch.
“The rocket will operate in orbit for a period of time before returning to its planned landing site in China,” state news agency Xinhua said in a report of the launch.
“To provide technical support for the peaceful use of space, we will verify reuse technologies and conduct space science experiments.”
