did china test and develop a surprise space weapon heres what we know experts report that similar technologies were developed by russia and the united states starting more than a half century agocreditmark schiefelbeinassociated presspublished oct 19 2021updated nov 3 2021the news report that emerged over the weekend sounded alarming china a rising military power had unexpectedly fired a novel space weapon two months ago it circled the planet and then reentered earths atmosphere gliding at velocities far faster than the speed of sound toward a destination on chinese territoryas a military capability bombarding a target from orbit in this way could overcome existing missile defenses but many experts expressed doubts about the reporttheres nothing we know from reliable sources said jonathan mcdowell a harvard astronomer who tracks global space launches the us military unit that reports on orbital events had made public no information on an august launch by china that matched the reported claim about a weapons test mcdowell saidevery aspect of this story has question marks he addeddid china really test and develop a surprise space weapon here are some of the military and technical points that are known about the system as well as some of the responses to and uncertainties about the flight testwhat was reported about chinas flight testthe financial times on saturday reported that china in august had flighttested a nuclearcapable hypersonic missile that circumnavigated the globe before speeding toward its target the paper giving one of the scarce details about the test said the weapon missed its target by about two dozen milesthe report relied on a variety of anonymous sources including one that said the weapon test caught us intelligence by surprise we have no idea how they did this the newspaper quoted an unnamed source as sayingdid china acknowledge carrying out the teston monday chinas foreign ministry said there was a flight test of a reusable space vehicle not a nuclearcapable hypersonic missile at a regular news briefing zhao lijian a chinese foreign ministry spokesman called it a routine testthere are many companies all over the world that have conducted similar tests he saidpreviously mr zhao has been criticized by western experts on china for making unsubstantiated claims and laying out conspiracy theorieschina initially gave august as the test date but later said the vehicle test happened in july according to bloomberg news last year in september the stateowned company that oversees chinas space industry announced a test of an experimental reusable spacecraft that completed a flight in low earth orbitis it true that this test launch was a surpriseprobably not the storys most eyecatching aspect that chinas weapon circled the globe before speeding toward its target is old stuff the technology was pioneered in the 1960s by the soviet union then it was known as the fractional orbital bombardment system or fobs it is so named because it never achieves a complete orbit of the earth but only a fractiondavid wright a physicist at the massachusetts institute of technology