Are China’s secret aircraft sending signals to hidden station in US? Satellite tracker says ‘maybe’

The secret space plane of China is likely to be sending signals to maybe a ship or a hidden ground station near the west coast of North America, said amateur astronomer Scott Tilley, who has kept track of the craft since it entered the orbit of Earth last week.

The astronomer claimed that strong emissions, which were at the frequency of 2280 megahertz, were detected at a time when the uncrewed reusable plane flew over British Columbia in Canada, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

“I’m seeing a pattern in its radio emissions while over me and it appears to favour low-elevation western passes,” said Tilley, who has earlier worked with NASA in finding its long-lost IMAGE satellite in 2018.

“This could indicate a clandestine ground station on the west coast of North America or on a ship off the coast,” he added while clarifying that he was speculating.

China’s secret plane, which has been seen as the US military space plane X-37B’s counterpart, has been closely followed by satellite trackers from across the world since it took off from the Gobi Desert.

As per Tilley and his team in Switzerland, which has specialised in optical-band space surveillance, because of the secret plane’s launch, at least six objects are now flying in the lower orbit of the Earth.

Tilley added that the six objects also included the space plane, which was designated by him as object A and looked very bright with a stable attitude control.

He added that probably there was a pair of satellites (objects D and E) which were released by the plane and emitted radio signals which were similar to object A, “but without any form of data, just idle filler”.

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Tilley added that although both the satellite’s purpose remains unknown, there is a possibility that they were being used to “test rendezvous and retrieval operations”.

Taking to social media platform X, the European team wrote that object B was “very bright” and its light curve was pointing to a rocket upper stage. Tilley said that Objects C and F also appeared to be rocket debris since they were tumbling and dim.

It is the third mission of the Chinese plane after their two-day maiden flight in 2020 followed by a second flight which lasted only for nine months. As per reports, the plane released mysterious objects during the two previous missions.

(With inputs from agencies)