The Co-Orbital Threat

Russia's Kosmos 2588 shows space is now a domain of maneuver, mischief, and menace

Good morning,

Russia launched a satellite this week and put it into the same orbital plane as a U.S. ‘spy’ satellite. Launching from Plesetsk aboard a Soyuz 2.1a, the satellite Kosmos 2588 entered into a 73-degree inclined orbit. This trajectory essentially mimics that of USA 338, a military optical reconnaissance satellite. These satellites can approach within 100km of one another in this configuration.

While that may not sound terribly close, in space it is.

And, it’s not the first time Russia has done this. In fact, over the past five years, they’ve done it four times.

There are really only a handful of reasons that Russia would want to mirror our orbital plane like this. One is to spy on our satellite. Closing within 100km of a target satellite allows for high resolution imaging. And copying orbital planes almost certainly enables FISINT collection (foreign instrumentation signals intelligence).

The other major reason for copying the orbital plane is for counterspace ope…