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A mysterious Russian satellite came within less than 100 feet of a key U.S.-Finnish radar satellite Sunday, according to publicly available tracking data, stoking fears that Moscow may be preparing to launch attacks in orbit and kick off an era of kinetic space warfare.
The Russian satellite Cosmos 2612 came remarkably close to ICEYE-X36, a U.S.-registered satellite made by the Finland-based company ICEYE that is believed to provide high-resolution space intelligence to the Ukrainian military.
The satellite tracking website Orbital Radar showed the trajectories of both objects. At their closest point, the data shows, they had an estimated “miss distance” of about 85 feet. Such a close encounter between two satellites is exceedingly rare and highly dangerous.
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Tracking data indicates that the Russian satellite closed in from more than 200 miles away to within roughly 3 miles of another satellite in a single day, suggesting the near-miss was intentional on the Russian side.
“This is a cross-border encounter between objects of different nations, the kind of event closely watched for space-security implications,” Orbital Radar said in its analysis of the incident.
Analysts have been closely tracking Russia’s Cosmos 2612 for days. Late last week, a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, detailed the Russian satellite’s trajectory and potential intentions.
Aerospace and national security insiders were concerned that the Russian satellite could seek to disable the ICEYE asset, perhaps by deploying a space weapon.
“Given Russia’s history of testing on-orbit weapons, policymakers should assume Cosmos 2612 could take an action that threatens the commercial satellite,” wrote Clayton Swope and Chantal Li, deputy director and senior fellow, and research assistant, respectively, with CSIS’s Aerospace Security Project.
“But the risk extends beyond just one satellite,” they wrote. “A Russian counterspace activity in the vicinity of Western satellites should be assessed within the context of aggressive Russian gray zone activities targeting U.S. and European interests. To date, neither the United States nor Europe has been able to deter Russia from expanding the scope and frequency of these gray zone actions.”
In 2024, Russia launched a counter-space weapon capable of attacking U.S. satellites in low earth orbit, the Pentagon said at the time. In 2021, Russia conducted a “hit-to-kill” test that destroyed one of its own satellites, smashing it into more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris, U.S. officials said.
Those instances, national security sources told The Washington Times, suggest that Russia is laying the groundwork for potential military action in space.
ICEYE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Russian Embassy in Washington and Roscosmos, Russia’s official state-run space agency, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Using an orbital weapon would be an extraordinary step by Russia and would immediately raise questions about how the U.S. and its allies should respond to actual space combat.
America now has assets in place to respond with its own attacks, if it chooses.
Last month, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink revealed for the first time that the U.S. has its own weapon in orbit. He suggested that the weapon is designed to counter attacks by other adversaries targeting satellites or other space-based assets.
“The United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” Mr. Meink said during an address at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, last month.
Mr. Meink’s announcement appeared designed to signal to China and Russia that the United States is now openly engaged, at a potentially kinetic level, in the growing great-power military competition in space.
Both adversaries have made major strides in their own space capabilities in recent years, including Moscow’s pursuit of anti-satellite weapons and Beijing’s investment in space weapons that U.S. defense analysts say are designed to destroy or disrupt American satellites.
Questions about the purpose of the Cosmos 2612 satellite have been raised amid broader uncertainty about the space-based assets aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
Last week, Ukrainian drone operators lost some of their connection speed after restrictions were imposed on battlefield use of the country’s U.S.-made Starshield communication terminals, officials said Wednesday as Kyiv endured a second straight night of missile attacks.
Lawmakers of both parties have questioned whether the Trump administration ordered those restrictions in response to public criticism by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others of a U.S.-Russia deal to relax sanctions on Russian diesel exports.
Specialists say the Russian satellite has maneuvered in ways that suggest it could potentially take action against the ICEYE commercial satellite.
“Over two weeks beginning on Sept. 30, 2026, Cosmos 2612 executed a series of new maneuvers that brought it back into coplanar alignment and placed it at nearly the same altitude as the commercial satellite,” the CSIS researchers wrote.
They said previous Russian Cosmos satellites have released objects while in orbit. Some U.S. officials described those released objects as having “exhibited the characteristics of a weapon system.”
The analysis by Mr. Swope and Ms. Li explains in great technical detail why Cosmos 2612’s actions are unusual.
“Maneuvering a satellite in low earth orbit into a coplanar orbit is unusual because it requires a large expenditure of fuel — a limited resource on a satellite — and is not part of the standard mission profile for most satellite missions, including broadband and remote sensing,” they wrote. “A satellite in an orbit coplanar to another satellite is positioned to quickly move, with little additional fuel expenditure, into place for conducting close-proximity operations.”
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