Reuters
China's shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts say. "It's obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them," said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. China has never disclosed what technologies the spacecraft has tested, nor has the spaceplane been publicly photographed since it began operating.