Russia’s KOSMOS military satellite stalks Finnish spy satellite, in what could see the first strike in a Ukraine star wars (Ukraine Battlefield update, day 1,698)
Ukraine is also scrambling to restore drone strikes after sudden Starlink limits and to repel Russian infiltrators in Dobropillia.
These are not yet Star Wars, but we may be approaching the first destruction of an enemy satellite in space. Marco Langbroek is a Dutch scientist whose original field was Palaeolithic archaeology. He now works at the prestigious Dutch Delft University of Technology , at its Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, where he observes and tracks objects orbiting the Earth.
Among other things, he specialises in observing classified spy satellites. After the downing of flight MH17, he was among the experts involved in the investigation. He was the first to publicly point out that the Russian missile which shot down the civilian aircraft may have been detected by US early-warning satellites.
The same scientist was the first this time to notice the unusual behaviour of the Russian military satellite KOSMOS 2612, which began carrying out manoeuvres in the immediate vicinity of the European satellite ICEYE-X36.
At first glance, this report appears to have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, but that is not the case. ICEYE-X36 is originally a Finnish satellite , launched into space in March 2024 from the Vandenberg space base in the United States, which is also used for the space programme, both military and civilian.
ICEYE-X36 uses radar observation and has cooperated with the Ukrainian government since 2022. Radar can monitor the Earth’s surface even through cloud cover, and Langbroek speculates that it is probably working for the Ukrainian military.
He began reporting on the situation on Saturday (17 October), calling it highly concerning.
"If Ukraine is indeed using ICEYE-X36, this means that a satellite of one country, Russia, is closely approaching a satellite of another state, Ukraine, with which it is at war," Langbroek wrote. He wondered whether "we are perhaps witnessing the first real anti-satellite attack directly in orbit in the course of its preparation".
Roman Pataj is Head of the Opinion section at Denník N and, since 2022, the author of the Ukrainian Battlefield update. He graduated in political science and has worked as a journalist since 2002.
