🛰️China's Copycat Spaceplane Spotted in Orbit by Maxar Satellite in 2024

Your satellite imagery just doubled as spy gear

A commercial satellite photographed a Chinese spaceplane that looks almost exactly like the US Air Force's X-37B. Same delta wings, same payload bay door, same dark heat shield. The photo came from a Vantor satellite, the company formerly known as Maxar, back in 2024. Why should you care? Because the cameras that image parking lots for the US military can also point at things in orbit. Vantor is one of several firms selling recon imagery to US intelligence, and those sensors don't stop at the ground. If you build anything that touches space data or imagery pipelines, the dual-use problem is now your problem too. China has flown four spaceplane missions since 2020, each lasting up to nine months. The fourth launched in February and is still up there. Nobody outside the government knows how many of these vehicles China actually has. The US Space Force, for comparison, runs two X-37Bs in rotation, and its longest mission lasted two and a half years from launch to landing.