After nine months in orbit, China’s mysterious spacecraft landed, making the country one of the few countries to successfully launch and recover a reusable spacecraft. The spacecraft returned to Earth on the morning of May 8 after 276 days in orbit, 100 times longer than its first flight nearly three years ago.

"The absolute success of this test marks a major breakthrough in China's research on reusable spacecraft technology," Xinhua, China's state media, reported in early May.

However, the Chinese government has released little additional information about the ship. Details about its design, capabilities and performance remain a mystery, Live Science reported on May 20.

Experts say it could be similar to the Boeing X-37B, a US space plane that debuted in 2010. The unveiling of the X-37B has raised concerns in China about the plane's military potential, according to Kevin Pollpeter, a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses. He said this may have prompted China's space program to start developing its own version.

Like the X-37B, the Chinese spacecraft appears to be unmanned and relatively small. It likely flew for the first time in September 2020, spent two days in orbit, and then returned to Earth. Its most recent mission began in August 2022, taking off on a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northern China, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in the US. The exact purpose of the mission remains a mystery.

According to CSIS, a Chinese spacecraft released an “object” into orbit around October. The object appeared to disappear in January, then suddenly reappeared on satellite tracking radar in March. Experts said this could indicate the aircraft had the ability to move satellites, for example with a robotic arm.

“China has done a lot of work with robotic arms in other contexts, like the space station,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. If so, the main purpose of a reusable spacecraft could be to repair a broken satellite or remove orbital debris.

Thu Thao (According to Live Science )