A Russian military satellite, Cosmos 2612, spent several days parked beside ICEYE-X36, a US-registered commercial radar satellite. At one point it came within an estimated 500 meters. The tracking company LeoLabs says the approach ran from October 15 to 19, and Cosmos 2612 has since begun moving away. Nothing indicates the two spacecraft touched.

The episode matters because ICEYE, a Finnish company, sells radar imagery to Ukraine’s armed forces. Several analysts say it may be the first time one active satellite in low Earth orbit has matched another’s orbit without its operator’s consent. Russia has not commented, and the US government has stayed silent.

Cosmos 2612 closed from hundreds of kilometers to a few hundred meters

LeoLabs runs a commercial radar network that tracks objects in orbit. It says Cosmos 2612 began its run at ICEYE-X36 on October 15. CNN reported that LeoLabs saw the gap shrink from about 350 kilometers to under 5 kilometers by early October 16.

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For the next few days the Russian craft did not simply fly past. It made small burns to hold position ahead of and behind the ICEYE craft, LeoLabs told Via Satellite. LeoLabs put the closest distance at roughly 500 meters. It cautioned that repeated maneuvers and awkward tracking geometry make that div uncertain.

Other trackers give different numbers. Marco Langbroek is a Dutch satellite tracker who lectures at Delft University of Technology. He wrote on his blog that the closest pass came at about 01:35 UTC on October 18. He put it at “a few hundred meters or possibly (much) closer.” A Russian Telegram channel claimed 26 meters, Meduza reported, but no tracking company has backed that div.

Langbroek also said the orbital data showed no sign of any bump or disturbance to ICEYE-X36. Whether it still works normally is something, as he put it, “only the users can tell us.”

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The Russian satellite pulled away, but may not be finished

Cosmos 2612 maneuvered again on October 18 and began to drift off. LeoLabs confirmed on October 19 that the close-proximity activity had ended. By the morning of October 21, Langbroek calculated, the two satellites were about 480 kilometers apart.

That is not necessarily the end. Langbroek spotted another maneuver late on October 19. It put Cosmos 2612 back at ICEYE-X36’s altitude, slowing the drift. His reading is that the Russian satellite “is not done with ICEYE-X36 yet.”

The October approach was also months in the making. Cosmos 2612 is one of six satellites, Cosmos 2609 to 2614, that Russia launched from Plesetsk on April 16. Within weeks, five of them made costly burns to move into the same orbital plane as an ICEYE satellite. Cosmos 2609 came within about 2.5 kilometers on May 26, the Center for Strategic and International Studies found.

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Changing orbital planes in low orbit burns a lot of fuel, which is why analysts read those moves as deliberate. A fresh series of maneuvers from September 30 lined Cosmos 2612 up again before the October run.

Why ICEYE-X36 is a sensitive target

ICEYE-X36 is a synthetic aperture radar satellite launched in 2024. Radar lets it image the ground at night and through cloud, which optical satellites cannot do. The US is its country of registry, and ICEYE’s US arm runs it, Breaking Defense reported.

ICEYE has sold imagery to Ukraine since 2022. In January it signed an expanded deal with Ukraine’s defense ministry, to support “the Ukrainian Armed Forces with persistent situational awareness on tactical timelines.” The company has never said which satellites serve that contract. A Ukrainian official told Axios the military uses ICEYE’s capabilities but could not confirm whether ICEYE-X36 is one of them.

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ICEYE says it is “aware of the situation and tracking it closely.” It added that its constellation is “designed for continuity and resilience.” The Pentagon declined to comment to Axios.

What a close approach like this can and cannot tell us

Analysts agree on the novelty and disagree on how worried to be. Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who catalogs launches and orbits, wrote that “to my knowledge” it was the first rendezvous of two active satellites in low Earth orbit where one owner “did not give approval.”

LeoLabs vice president Adam Marsh told Breaking Defense it was “the most advanced and potentially dangerous uncooperative RPO we’ve observed.” RPO is industry shorthand for rendezvous and proximity operations.

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LeoLabs itself was careful about intent. It said the maneuvers “do not establish hostile intent.” They do show skills that could support spying, inspection, “coercive signaling, interference, or preparation for future counterspace operations.” Holding station that close takes planning, precise guidance and onboard sensors that can measure another spacecraft’s position.

The CSIS analysts, Clayton Swope and Chantal Li, were blunter. They argued that policymakers “should assume Cosmos 2612 could take an action that threatens the commercial satellite.” Langbroek asked whether this could be an anti-satellite attack in the making. He also noted that attribution in space is “very difficult.” If ICEYE-X36 failed later, proving that Cosmos 2612 caused it would be hard.

The facts so far support a narrower conclusion. Russia has shown it can find one commercial satellite, match its orbit and sit beside it for days. It did so without the operator’s consent, and Washington has not publicly responded. That is a capability demonstration, whatever the purpose.

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Russia has done this to US satellites before, but never this close

Russian inspector satellites have shadowed American spacecraft for years. In early 2020, Cosmos 2542 trailed the US spy satellite USA 245 at roughly 150 to 300 kilometers, according to The War Zone. That July, the US said a companion, Cosmos 2543, fired a projectile in an anti-satellite weapons test. In May 2025, US Space Command confirmed that Cosmos 2588 sat in an orbit near a US government satellite, believed to be USA 338.

What separates Cosmos 2612 is distance and target. Earlier shadowing happened tens to hundreds of kilometers away, and it targeted government satellites. This time a Russian craft came within hundreds of meters of a private satellite. Its owner supplies imagery to the country Russia is fighting.

It also fits a wider pattern. NATO governments have accused Russia of exploring weapons to disable Starlink satellites over Ukraine. Washington has acknowledged it has weapons in orbit. Its military is also still tracking debris from the unexplained breakup of USA 32 in September.

The next signal to watch is in the orbital data. Langbroek’s October 19 data already shows Cosmos 2612 back at ICEYE-X36’s altitude. A new set of phasing burns by it or its five sister satellites would signal a second approach. That would turn a one-off demonstration into a pattern, and put pressure on the US government to respond for a satellite it registers.