Russia launched three secretive satellites into orbit earlier this year, and they appear to have recently released a mysterious object. The satellites’ unusual maneuvers have reignited concerns that Russia may be testing military capabilities in space—or even preparing for space warfare.
The trio of satellites—designated Kosmos 2581, 2582, and 2583—launched on February 2 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. Russia hasn’t declared the purpose of the satellites, but the secretive launch raised suspicion that they are military in nature. Last month, the U.S. Space Force cataloged a new object nearby, which may have been released by one of the satellites, Kosmos 2583, on March 18, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, who tracks objects in orbit, wrote on X.
It’s not clear what the mystery object is doing in space, but U.S. officials are worried that both Russia and China are carrying out secret military training missions in low Earth orbit, according to a CNN report. A U.S. defense official told CNN that Russian satellites were practicing “attack and defend tactics,” and working together “to surround and isolate another satellite that was positioned in low-Earth orbit, demonstrating how they could potentially target enemy spacecraft in a future conflict.”
McDowell, however, dismissed the claims made in the report. “This seems a big stretch to describe what Kosmos-2581-82-83 are up to,” he wrote on X. He added that the three satellites carried out proximity operations between February 25 and March 14, with two of them passing satellite 2583 quickly on March 7. However, that may just be a “coincidence of the fact they are in similar orbits, no evidence of targeting,” he added.
Russia is no stranger to shady operations in space. In August 2022, Russia launched another mysterious satellite, Kosmos 2558, into the same orbital plane as a U.S. military satellite. At the time, it was believed that the Russian satellite was sent to space to spy on its U.S. counterpart.
The trio of satellites currently in orbit could be carrying out a number of missions in space, whether surveillance or test maneuvers for future spacecraft, but the U.S. Space Force will likely keep a close watch of the satellites to monitor their behavior.
