US officials are worried about the strange movements of a Russian satellite. On 14 August, Yleem Poblete of the US Department of State about the spacecraft at a United Nations conference on disarmament held in Geneva.
âWe are concerned with what appears to be very abnormal behaviour by a declared âspace apparatus inspector.â We donât know for certain what it is, and there is no way to verify it,â Poblete said.
She referenced previous statements by Russian officials about programs to develop anti-satellite systems, and said the US has no way to tell if the satellite in question is a weapon. A Russian delegate at the conference said Pobleteâs remarks were unfounded, .
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Based on the satelliteâs orbital changes â which are tracked by the US and made publicly available â it is hard to tell whether the manoeuvres have an innocuous explanation, says Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.
Mystery mission
The satellite in question, Kosmos-2519, launched in October 2017 and then deployed two smaller satellites. Since then Kosmos-2519 has made a series of orbital adjustments, including a rendezvous with those smaller satellites in December, and flurry of activity beginning in late June 2018 in which it entered an orbit closer to Earth.
From 27 June to 19 July, Kosmos-2519 made a series of adjustments that changed its orbit from a circular one 650 kilometres above Earth to an elongated orbit with a low point of 317 kilometres above Earth. For the past month Kosmo-2519 has been sitting in that lower orbit.
The Russian satellite operators could simply be testing their ability to identify space debris, but they could also potentially be trialling techniques for monitoring other satellites in low orbit.
âIt could be for that kind of spying,â says McDowell. âIt could also be testing out Earth-observing cameras from different heights. That seems like a weird thing to do, but who knows?â
The day after these manoeuvres ended, one of the smaller satellites also lowered its orbit down to 292 kilometres at its lowest point, and it remains in that position.
Thatâs not a coincidence, McDowell says, but the connection between the two is puzzling. It may be that Russia simply decided to move the satellites one after the other. Or it could be that one of the satellites was observing the other and that  test is now complete, so theyâve been put into lower orbits to speed up their eventual re-entry into the Earthâs atmosphere.
âWe just have to wait and see. Weâve got the popcorn out and weâre checking the orbital data every day,â McDowell says.
The lowering of orbits is much less provocative manoeuvre than attempting to move one satellite close to another, says Laura Grego, a space security expert at the Union of Concerned 51¶ŻÂțs in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A satellite able to close in on another could potentially carry a weapon, but it could also perform more benign tasks like inspection, refuelling or repair, she says.
But without knowing how the Russian satellite is equipped, it is fair to say the US canât rule out the possibility it carries a test weapon. Poblete said that these manoeuvres are âinconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational awareness capabilitiesâ, but McDowell says they are merely unusual, not unprecedented.
Russian officials are not being transparent about the reasons for the movement of this satellite, but US officials may be jumping to the worst-case scenario. âAt some level, thatâs their job. But theyâve jumped from âwe donât knowâ to rampant paranoia,â McDowell says.
