China appears to be attempting to salvage spacecraft initially intended for the moon but left stranded by a rocket stage malfunction. The small DRO-A and B spacecraft launched from Xichang spaceport on a Long March 2C rocket on March 13. Hours later, the first acknowledgement of the mission came from Chinese state media Xinhua, which announced that the spacecraft had not been inserted accurately into their designated orbit by the rocket’s Yuanzheng-1S upper stage.

Data from the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron (SDS) initially showed objects associated with the launch in low Earth orbit (LEO). However, subsequent Two Line Element (TLE) data sets from 18 SDS show an object from the launch in a 525 x 132,577-kilometer, highly-elliptical, high Earth orbit. This has since been raised, with the spacecraft tracked in a 971 x 225,193-km orbit on March 26.

This indicates that at least one satellite, and perhaps both, separated from the upper stage, and that the object’s orbit has been raised. Space activity tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told SpaceNews, ‘We don’t know much, but I think we can say from the tracking data that the payload(s) separated from the YZ stage, and has made at least one orbit raising burn which indicates an attempt to save the mission.’

Neither state media nor China’s space authorities stated that DRO-A and B were intended to be moon-bound. However, a 2023 journal paper on high-precision relative navigation technology for satellites of the same name indicates the pair are intended to enter a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. The orbital data now confirm this.

The DRO-A and B pair are designed to communicate from distant retrograde orbit with the Queqiao relay satellite, launched in 2018 to enable communications with the far side of the moon. The relay satellite is currently facilitating the Chang’e-4 lunar lander and rover mission, and was intended to support the Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission in 2019.

China’s attempt to salvage the spacecraft from lunar limbo suggests a commitment to the success of its space missions. The maneuver to raise the object’s orbit indicates an effort to save the mission and potentially recover the spacecraft’s original intended purpose.