When Russia launched the Luch Olymp K-2 geostationary spy satellite in March, analysts expected it to perform signal-gathering missions like its predecessor, Luch Olymp K-1, which has been in orbit since 2014.

Slingshot Aerospace, a space data analytics firm specializing in spaceflight safety, this week released data showing that the new Russian spy satellite, also known as Luch-2, is performing operations similar to those of its predecessor, Luch-1, which raised new satellites. Concerns about espionage in space.

The company’s space tracking software detected multiple maneuvers that closely resembled the behavior of Lucha-1, which caused international outrage when it stalled for five months between two commercial Intelsat communications satellites in 2015.

A series of maneuvers starting on September 26 show Luch-2 drifting westward at about 1 degree per day, then slowing down to visit another “site” of the GEO spacecraft on October 2, according to Slingshot.

Looking for abnormal behavior

Audrey Shaffer, Slingshot’s vice president of strategy and policy, said the maneuvers were detected by the company’s automated software that tracks all satellites.

“We didn’t necessarily observe this satellite. We were just looking for things that stood out with abnormal behavior,” Shaffer said.

Slingshot does not disclose which satellites Luch-2 can spy on. But Shaffer said the information could be useful to any government or commercial satellite operator concerned with security in space.

“We believe these findings have both military and commercial benefits,” he said. Luch-2 does not come close enough to any satellite to trigger the U.S. Space Force’s collision alert, known as a rendezvous alert. “But just because it’s not close enough to be a security threat doesn’t mean it’s not potentially a security threat,” Shaffer said.

“If you are a commercial satellite communications company, you may not want a Russian spy satellite listening to your communications,” he added.

Luch-2 had the same payloads as its predecessor, according to Michael Klonts, director of space awareness initiatives at Kratos Defense. However, “given Luch-2’s decades of additional technology, it likely has more advanced signals intelligence capabilities and operational techniques.”

Slingshot describes its spatial tracking software as a “machine learning-based object profiling engine” that pulls data from multiple sources.

According to Shaffer, the system tracked Lucha-2’s westward drift and predicted where it was heading. According to him, the ability to predict a satellite’s orbit is not easy to achieve. “The challenge of detecting a maneuver is that when you look back you can historically clearly see that the satellite was maneuvering.” But in real time, “it is difficult to determine whether the satellite was deliberately maneuvering or whether the data tracking system lost its position.”

He said the Slingshot algorithm can detect Lucha-2 maneuvers as soon as they are present in the data, without looking at long-term patterns. The algorithm is trained to decide what is normal and what is abnormal for a given trajectory, and sends out alerts when something is unusual and needs attention. “So we went back and had our sensors confirm that what we were seeing with our algorithms was accurate,” Schaffer added.

Inspector satellites such as Luch-1 and Luch-2 are expected to pass by, take photographs and continue on their way. A signal reconnaissance satellite will remain near the target satellite or group of satellites. “This is what we’ve seen historically with the original Beam 1 satellite,” Shaffer said. said.

According to him, “Luch-2” remained in the same area from May until the end of September, when it began to drift. “As a result, his lifestyle is very similar to that of the original Lucha.”

Shaffer, the former White House space policy official, said such satellite maneuvers are suspicious. “There are currently a number of international debates going on about what norms of responsible behavior apply in space,” he said. “And actions like this should be taken into account as the international community develops the rules of the road that apply to space operators.”

He said it was also notable that private companies were providing space knowledge and awareness previously only available from military systems. “But that’s no longer the case,” Shaffer said. “You have companies producing their own space data with their own networks of telescopes.” Source