The US Defense Intelligence Agency has released what it describes as the first clear images of China's secret robotic spaceplane, Shenlong — "Divine Dragon" — which has been flying classified missions in low Earth orbit since 2020.
The photographs were taken in 2024, while the craft was in orbit, by the private space technology company Vantor, formerly Maxar Technologies, according to the DIA. Vantor posted about the images on X.
What the pictures show
The spaceplane is about 26 feet long. Its payload bay door is partly open. A satellite or service module is docked at the rear.
The design closely resembles the US Space Force's X-37B. Jonathan McDowell, a satellite-tracking specialist described in the report as working at Durham University's space research centre, said it was built much like the American craft.
What was already known from tracking
Even without pictures, Shenlong has not been invisible. Radar tracking has established that it releases unidentified payloads or CubeSats, and that it has spent hundreds of days in space across its missions.
The most striking demonstrated capability is retrieval: the craft has recovered a satellite it had itself released into orbit months earlier. It can place objects in orbit, leave them, come back for them, and return to Earth.
That combination — deploy, loiter, retrieve, land, reuse — is what makes a spaceplane strategically different from a rocket. A rocket delivers and is gone. This comes back, and can bring something with it.
The silence is part of the story
China has published no images and no details of the craft. Everything in the public record comes from foreign tracking, foreign imaging and, now, a foreign intelligence agency choosing to release what it has.
That choice is itself worth reading. The DIA did not have to publish these. Releasing them makes a point about what American satellites can see, while framing the subject — the DIA says China's fast-growing space programme is a strategic priority aimed at military dominance.
How to weigh this report
The chain of custody matters here, and it is longer than usual. The images originate with a commercial imaging firm, are released by a military intelligence agency with an institutional interest in how China's capabilities are perceived, and reach this part of the world through a secondary report in a British tabloid before being picked up elsewhere.
None of that makes the pictures false — a photograph of a spaceplane with its bay open is hard to argue with. But the interpretation around them is supplied entirely by one side of a rivalry, and there is no Chinese account to set against it. The images are evidence. The framing is advocacy, and the two should be read separately.
What a spaceplane is actually for
The military value is not speed or stealth — anything in low orbit is tracked by somebody. It is the combination of staying up for a long time and coming back down intact.
A craft that loiters for hundreds of days can change its orbit repeatedly, so what it will pass over next month is not predictable from where it is today. A craft that lands can bring hardware home to be examined, repaired and flown again, which makes experiments cheap enough to repeat.
And a craft that can retrieve someone else’s satellite — the capability Shenlong has already demonstrated on its own hardware — is the one that makes other countries uncomfortable, because inspection and removal use exactly the same arm.
