Over the weekend, a mysterious Russian satellite moved threateningly close to a U.S. commercial radar satellite that provides imagery to the Ukrainian military. Although the Russian craft is now backing off, analysts are left wondering: What was the Russian satellite doing at such close proximity? Was Russia planning to attack the U.S. satellite but reversed course?
And, crucially, what happens next?
“We just don’t know,” said Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington.
The maneuvers are an escalation of cat-and-mouse games that Russia, the United States and China have been playing with each other in space, mainly involving military spacecraft.
This episode indicates that commercial satellites can be targets as well.
The Russian satellite was one of six that launched on a Soyuz rocket in April. Russia said nothing about the satellites, and, like many presumed military spacecraft, they were given a generic Kosmos designation, with numbers 2609 through 2614.
Beginning on Sept. 30, Kosmos 2612 made a series of maneuvers to approach ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite built by ICEYE, a company headquartered in Finland that provides three-dimensional images of Earth’s surface. ICEYE has a U.S. subsidiary, and ICEYE-X36 is registered as a U.S. satellite.
In August 2022, ICEYE announced it had transferred one of its satellites — it did not say which one — to the Ukrainian government and provided access to its wider constellation of satellites to help Ukraine in its war with Russia. In January of this year, ICEYE announced it had signed a contract that provided Ukraine with expanded access to the space-based data.
“We are aware of the situation and tracking it closely,” ICEYE said in a statement. “Our constellation architecture is designed for continuity and resilience.”
A week ago, Integrity ISR, a company that provides training and consulting on intelligence-gathering, raised the alarm that Kosmos 2612 was almost in the same orbit as the ICEYE satellite, about 335 miles above Earth, trailing by about 300 miles.
By the end of the week, it had closed in within a couple hundred meters, said Adam Marsh, vice president of technical solutions at LeoLabs, a company that tracks objects in orbit.
“It was doing a lot of maneuvers to maintain that position of that close approach,” Mr. Marsh said.
What the Russian spacecraft was doing is a mystery. Depending on how it was outfitted, it could have been gathering imagery or other data about ICEYE. Or it could have been carrying a projectile or other weapon.
Mr. Marsh said the ICEYE satellite did not perform any maneuvers to evade Kosmos 2612, which could have increased the chance of a collision.
Late Sunday, the Russian satellite moved to a slightly higher orbit, slowing its speed. As of Monday afternoon, the distance between the two satellites was over 250 miles and increasing by about 10 miles an hour, LeoLabs data indicated.
Mr. Swope that said perhaps Kosmos 2612 had completed all the tasks that Russia had planned. It’s also possible Russia had a more sinister action in mind, such as attacking and destroying the ICEYE spacecraft, but called it off.
Mr. Swope said it was hard not to see a connection between President Trump’s decision on Friday to waive new sanctions against Russia and the retreat of Kosmos 2612.
“It may be a coincidence, but to me, it feels like there must be some link there,” Mr. Swope said.
He added that the episode fits the pattern of Russia’s sabotage attacks on the ground in Europe, which have included arson and cutting undersea cables.
“To me, this is just one other data point of Russia taking some very hostile action, pushing boundaries, seeing how far they can go,” Mr. Swope said.
Space watchers are now looking for Russia’s next move. Kosmos 2612 could easily close in on ICEYE-X36 again. The other five Kosmos satellites that launched in April could be next to swoop in.
“Usually these events don’t just end on one,” Mr. Marsh said.
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