Several outlets, chiefly in the UK, report today that suspicion is growing (especially at the British Interplanetary Society) that the US Air Force X-37b, the stub-winged orbiter that has been up there for more than a year doing things the Air Force would rather not share, has lately been on a path that periodically gets it close to Tiangong-1. China launched the latter in September as the embryo of what it hopes to make into a fulltime manned space station. (See previous post on earlier reports about the X-37b). So we have motive, and opportunity. In court, that’s not enough to convict, but the cops do get curious.

It’s unclear who got this first. The  BBC‘s Jonathan Amos has among the most complete accounts of this speculative piece of news and adorned with extensive illus. Other outlets tend to cite BBC. So one may guess that  Amos left the gate first. His  primary source is the editor of the magazine Spaceflight that the British Interplanetary Society publishes. I cannot find that magazine on line, but Amos has admirable detail and plenty of caveats to point out the guesswork behind the supposition. Several outlets say the magazine issue on all this is due out over the weekend. If we get a link, we’ll add it. This reflects little science, but it IS about space rockets and their cargoes which have always been on the science desk’s beat.

Not much real meat in all this, but interesting – and could be the sort of news that sparks interest in the US Congress to ramp up America’s military space program.

Other Stories:

• Register (UK) Brid-Aine Parnell:  US ‘space warplane’ may be spying on Chinese spacelab; She raises a lot of other things that the X-37b might be up to.
• FoxNews – Is the Air Force’s Secret Robot Plane Spying on China?
• PopSci – Clay Dillow:The USAF’s X-37B Secret Space Plane Appears to Be Tracking China’s New Space Station ; Dillow dances around the iffiness of this news – his lede is, “Here at PopSci we don’t like to spread rumors” but then  explains that sometimes one just has to share. It is, he concedes, a “kind of hearsay rooted mostly in speculation.” If that’s not a caveat, there is no such thing.
• Huffington  Post – Michael Rundler: American X-38B Space Plane “Probably” Spying on China ; Hed’s a bit off. Spying on China implies a lot more than simply peeking at a piece of its property that is in outer space for anybody to look at. The story makes that clear.

*UPDATES (Mon Jan 9):

• As one will notice in comments – thank you Daniel Fischer – at IEEE Spectrum a source of high credential, long time space analyst James Oberg, has written what looks to these eyes a concussive demolition of the thesis’s underlying presumption. That is the notion that the orbits of the American drone spaceplane and the budding Chinese space station are just the thing for the first to spy on the second. While the orbits do get them close to one another with regularity, they do so at nearly right angles to one another and at such high relative velocity that no competent spy program would ever try it as a good way to sneak a peek. Oberg calls it a horrendous error on the part of the British Interplanetary Society’s editors.
• At Space.com, Mike Wall reports essentially the same thing: ‘No Chance’ Secret X-37B Space Plane Spying on China Module: Expert
• Still no sign that the issue of BIS’s magazine Spaceflight carrying the assertion that the space plane is spying on China’s project, supposedly to be out over the weekend just past, has come out. If anybody sees it, with or without the article in question, or any other reax to these doubts from BIS, please let us know.

- Charlie Petit

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