A Russian military satellite maneuvered to within approximately 500 meters (1,640 feet) of ICEYE-X36, a US-registered commercial radar imaging satellite, between Oct. 15 and Oct. 19, in what space tracking firms and analysts describe as an unprecedented uncoordinated rendezvous in low Earth orbit.
Space tracking company LeoLabs said in a press release that Russia’s Kosmos 2612 “conducted a deliberate series of maneuvers toward ICEYE-X36” involving “continued maneuvering around ICEYE-X36, shifting between positions ahead of and behind the commercial satellite.” LeoLabs told The War Zone it has “high-confidence that the objects came within approximately 500 meters of each other.” Publicly available tracking data from satellitemap.space and orbitalradar.com showed a close encounter at approximately 16:07 UTC on Oct. 19, with some data suggesting a pass within approximately 85 feet (26 meters).
Independent tracker Jonathan McDowell wrote on X that new tracking data showed Kosmos 2612 made a maneuver on Oct. 16 and was station-keeping within 5 km (3 miles) or less of ICEYE-X36. “To my knowledge this is the first LEO rendezvous of two active satellites where the owner of one of the sats did not give approval,” he wrote.
Adam Marsh, LeoLabs vice president for technical solutions, told Breaking Defense: “This is the most advanced and potentially dangerous uncooperative RPO we’ve observed.”
Kosmos 2612 is one of six Russian military satellites launched on a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in April 2026. In May, five of those satellites carried out fuel-hungry maneuvers to shift their orbits into the same plane as ICEYE-X36, and one passed within about 2.5 km of it on May 26, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski later told Reuters the company had moved its satellite in response.
Trackers said Kosmos 2612 began its stalking mission on Sept. 30, executing a series of maneuvers “clearly designed” to catch up to the ICEYE satellite, according to space watcher Marco Langbroek. Around Oct. 12, analysts saw it make a single burn that put it back at nearly the same altitude, inclination and orbital plane as ICEYE-X36, trailing the commercial satellite by roughly 475 km (295 miles) and slowly catching up, before the Oct. 16 maneuver brought it alongside.
LeoLabs’ analysis concluded that Kosmos 2612 “demonstrated a sequence of capabilities that could be used to inspect, characterize, shadow, or potentially interfere with another spacecraft,” including departing on a controlled trajectory, deliberately matching the orbital plane of another satellite, closing from long range in a controlled manner, repositioning ahead of and behind the target, and making repeated small maneuvers while in proximity.
ICEYE, a Finnish-founded company, operates a fleet of small synthetic aperture radar satellites, which can image the ground at night and through clouds. Ukraine has used ICEYE imagery since 2022, including from a satellite bought with crowdfunded donations. ICEYE-X36 is operated by the company’s US arm, ICEYE US, and was launched from the United States in 2024, making it a US satellite or at least one for which the United States is the launching state, said Victoria Samson, chief director of Space Security and Stability for Secure World Foundation.
Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that given Russia’s history of testing on-orbit weapons, “policymakers should assume Cosmos 2612 could take an action that threatens the commercial satellite.” He added: “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.”
Russia has a history of parking its satellites near other countries’ spacecraft. In 2020, Kosmos 2542 and its subsatellite Kosmos 2543 trailed a U.S. government reconnaissance satellite, prompting public complaints from U.S. Space Command. LeoLabs said the latest observations show the two spacecraft “strongly diverging” and that “the close-proximity activity had ended.”
Sources: Defence Blog · Breaking Defense