A US State Department official told a UN committee this week that a Russian military satellite's maneuvers near a commercial spacecraft looked like a weapons operation.
The big picture: Kosmos 2612 has been performing choreographed burns since its April launch to match orbits with ICEYE-X36, a radar surveillance satellite run by the US subsidiary of Finnish firm ICEYE, about 340 miles up.
- "These behaviors appear consistent with an on-orbit weapons operation," State Department official Brian Hardesty told the UN General Assembly's First Committee. "The decision to conduct these activities was deliberately reckless."
By the numbers: Orbital intelligence firm LeoLabs told Ars Technica that Kosmos 2612 closed to within 500 meters of the ICEYE satellite and likely much nearer. US envoy Jessup Taylor suggested the gap may have narrowed to about 100 feet.
The other side: Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy head of Russia's UN delegation, called the concerns unfounded and said all Russian activity in space is "purely peaceful in character," including the Kosmos 2612 operation.
- In 2022 the same diplomat said Western commercial satellites supporting Ukraine's military could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.
Between the lines: "What you do up there speaks much louder than what you say down here," Taylor said. Russia has spent years testing co-orbital anti-satellite systems, including Nivelir, which can fire a projectile at another object in orbit.
What's next: Kosmos 2612 has backed off and is orbiting far away, though its trajectory leaves room for another approach. In September the Air Force secretary acknowledged for the first time that the US has space-based weapons of its own.
Why it matters: Commercial satellites now carry imaging and comms that militaries depend on, which puts private hardware inside a great-power standoff. Russia and China are pushing a UN ban on space weapons that US officials call unworkable.
