China’s space program has dropped an unexpected – and mysterious – object into Earth’s orbit, fueling speculation about what the nature of the payload might be.
China launched a plane on August 4 with a Long March 2F rocket and it has been in orbit for about three months, SpaceNews report. Its orbit has been closely linked to an unknown payload. The US Space Force initially tracked the object near the aircraft, then Space-Track.organ orbital object database, recorded an entry for it on October 21.
The origin of the package is still unknown, and China has yet to make a statement about it. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell of Harvard University speculated on Twitter that it can be a service module, which may have previously contained fuel or supplies for aircraft but is now Garbage is burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere. This also means that the spacecraft itself is ready to debit and land back on land.
Or, that object could also be some kind of satellite to monitor the spacecraft’s mission or serve some other purpose. Very unlikely but it is still possible that the object is a anti-satellite weapon or some other nefarious device—meaning that China is ready to escalate the flaring space war.
Whatever the object is, it only adds to the mystery and mystery that is China’s spacecraft program, which Beijing has kept tightly secret since its first launch in 2020. In While the first mission lasted only two days, this latest mission has been going on for more than 90 days. The second launch was also a bit of a surprise as China only said it was launching a classified payload, which was later revealed to be check out its reusable aircraft.
So very little is known about what a satellite could be – or even what a plane could be. One thing is for sure, China’s continued efforts to keep its spaceflight projects close to the mantle is a clear sign that nations are taking space very seriously. It not only represents the future of humanity’s ambition to colonize other planets, but it also represents very real power on Earth.
