In June, it released a small satellite and captured it, probably with a robotic arm (although experts are not sure) three weeks later. In August, Shenlong again deployed a small satellite, retreated a few thousand miles into the void, only to return a few weeks later to chase the small-sat again, according to astronomer and space sustainability expert Jonathan McDowell.

No one outside of Beijing truly knows, Victoria Samson, the Chief Director for Space Security and Stability at Secure World Foundation, told Supercluster.

“The Chinese have a lot of interest in rendezvous and proximity operations,” Samson said. “These could be used either as weapons or counterspace capabilities, but they can also have other, completely non-aggressive reasons, too.”

For example, in 2022, China shocked the West when one of its satellites in the geostationary orbit — the region of space at the altitude of 22,000 miles where many telecoms and spy satellites are stationed — grabbed another, defunct Chinese spacecraft with its robotic arm and dragged it away into a distant scrap orbit.

Many Western experts perceived the act as China’s demonstration of formidable technological prowess that could be used to take out other nations’ satellites. The technology, however, is also a key enabler for in-orbit servicing, space debris removal and in-space manufacturing.

“It depends how you look at it,” said Samson. “China had a hazard in orbit and they took care of it, which is a good thing for space safety all around. But doing so, China demonstrated they have a coorbital counterspace capability because they can move a satellite by themselves.”

What unsettles the Western security experts is the fact that no other nation has achieved such advanced levels of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) — that kind of close-range orbital maneuvering needed to inspect, dock with, and move other spacecraft. America’s own secretive spaceplane X-37B has released a series of satellites during its eight missions, some of them classified, but has never rendezvoused with another space object, as far as publicly available information goes.

Other Western-made satellites have tested technology for approaching other satellites in space within close distances and, in some cases, attached to them. Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicles 1 and 2, docked with two aging telecommunication satellites of American company Intelsat in 2019 and 2020 to extend their missions. Japan-headquartered Astroscale has conducted experiments with magnetic capture in orbit in 2021 and carried out a close-up inspection of a discarded rocket stage in 2024.

China, on the other hand, has been regularly performing RPOs, releasing and catching objects in orbit, since at least the early 2010s. The Shenlong spaceplane itself has conducted multiple such exercises since its second mission in 2022. The current mission is the spaceplane’s fourth.

Western space watchers only know about the plane’s activities through radar and telescope observations by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network and private firms, such as LeoLabs. In fact, it was LeoLabs that first spotted the latest round of maneuvers in June 2026.

In fact, Western analysts are not even sure whether the plane’s name really is Shenlong, a Chinese word for a dragon deity. The Secure World Foundation, for example, prefers to refer to the spaceplane simply as the “Chinese reusable experimental spacecraft,” or Chongfu Shiyong Shiyan Hangtian Qi, CSSHQ in short.

In the West, nobody has ever seen the plane, and most of the estimates of its size come from the fact that it rides to space atop the Long March 2F rocket — a medium-lift launcher best known for lofting to orbit China’s crewed Shenzhou spacecraft.

In 2024, an Austrian satellite tracker, Felix Schöfbänker, captured the only known images of the spaceplane with his telescope. The images, extremely vague and grainy, reveal a nondescript body approximately 32 feet (10 meters) long, with most of its key features either non identifiable or not visible in the image.

The CSSHQ made its first two-day test flight in 2020, but has quickly graduated to much lengthier missions. The plane’s second and third missions, launched in August 2022 and December 2023 respectively, have both lasted around 270 days. The current mission, the fourth in line, launched in February this year. It’s not known whether a single plane is being refurbished and reflown, sometimes with just a couple of months between landing and launch, or whether China has several models in stock.

The plane, developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute (611 Institute), launches from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northern China near the border with Mongolia, and lands autonomously without propulsion at the Lop Nur landing range in the Chinese northwest.

Although the craft is reportedly operated by the People’s Liberation Army, China states that the purpose of the plane is fully peaceful.

“The Chinese call it a verification platform for testing re-entry glide return technology,” said Samson. “They say that the program includes verification, space science experiments, and paves the way for more convenient and affordable roundtrip methods for the peaceful use of space in the future.”

Still, China has registered neither the spaceplane nor the satellites it released with the United Nations, sidestepping its legal obligations, according to the Secure World Foundation.

The secrecy surrounding the project fuels speculation that the plane could be a space weapon in the making, said Samson, but added that no evidence exists that China may be planning to use the plane to attack its adversaries either in space or on Earth.

“We think the plane might have a payload bay roughly the size of a pickup truck, so it probably wouldn’t be releasing weapons simply because it doesn’t have that much room,” she said.

Any hyperkinetic weapon dropped from the spaceplane’s bay, aiming for ground-based targets, would need to be equipped with its own thrusters capable of performing a deorbit burn. But the plane’s small size means such technology is unlikely to fit in, Samson added.

No other nation apart from the U.S. possesses a reusable spaceplane capable of complex orbital maneuvers, long-duration missions and repeated flights.

“Both are very advanced platforms that prove that China and the US are doing something way ahead of everybody else,” said Samson.

The American plane has conducted eight missions since 2010; its latest, having launched in August 2025 and still in orbit today, beats in mission duration the longest of the Chinese flights. X-37B’s longest mission to date — the OTV-6 flight launched in May 2020 — lasted two and a half years.

Although the Chinese excel in the kind of RPO operations performed this summer, the American plane outperforms the Chinese not just in mission durations. The CSSHQ has only been seen lingering in low Earth orbit at altitudes up to 372 miles (600 kilometers) — about 120 miles (200 km) higher than the orbit of the International Space Station and 160 miles (240 km) above the Chinese space station’s orbit.

The X-37B, on the other hand, ventured as far as 24,133 miles (38,838 kilometers) from the planet during its OTV-7 mission in 2024. That flight saw the American spaceplane perform a series of aerobraking maneuvers, steep dives into the atmosphere to test how interaction with the thin upper atmospheric air alters its orbit.

During that mission, the U.S. Air Force released the only known official picture of the plane in space, showing the blue marble of the Earth lingering in the distance below the plane’s metallic belly.

Otherwise, details of the X-37B’s whereabouts and activities are as scarce as those about the Chinese spaceplane.

“The U.S. talks about it being a technology demonstrator that has taken up some science experiments,” said Samson. “But overall the project is very much shielded in classification. It’s hard to know specifically what they are doing.”

The X-37B program was conceived at NASA in 1999 but transitioned to DARPA in 2004 and to the U.S. Air Force two years later. The plane was originally designed to launch on the Atlas V rocket but has since transitioned to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers. About a quarter the size of the Space Shuttle, the Boeing-made X-37B usually lands at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California or the Space Shuttle runway at the Kennedy Space Center. During its latest mission, Boeing — the plane’s manufacturer — released one statement in April this year, stating the “plane remains in orbit, supporting government experiments.”

The Space Force and the Air Force have been tight-lipped since the plane’s latest launch. According to the Boeing press release, the plane is testing new laser communication systems, quantum sensing technologies, and the effects of long-term space exposure on the innovative high-performance polymer Zylon.