satellites that are divided into more satellites to harass the enemy

The orbit of the earth is gradually becoming A tense chess board. The last play has been starred by Russia with the deployment of an unknown object by the spy satellite Kosmos 2558.

Short. On June 26, a Russian military satellite who had been chasing an American spy satellite for three years has decided to open up and release a new object. It is not the first time that this behavior is observed in a Russian ship. In fact, “it is the third time that happens in five years, and the second this year,” according to An analysis of the expert Marco Langbroek.

A Russian doll in space. The protagonist of this story is the Kosmos 2558, a military satellite that Russia launched to space in August 2022. Since its orbit, its mission has been an open secret: closely and without rest the ship uses 326, a spy satellite of the National Office of Recognition of the United States (NRO). Now, almost three years after starting its persecution, Kosmos 2558 has released a subsatellite, designated ‘object C’.

Langbroek’s observations in Sortrackcam from Leiden (Netherlands) confirmed this behavior. Your telescope captured the new ‘object C’more dim, the night of June 28, two and a half days after separating from his nodriza ship. It appeared 16 seconds after Kosmos 2558, already at a distance of 143 kilometers. Langbroek has compared this behaviorin which a satellite generates other satellites, with a Russian ‘matrioshka’.

The orbital harassment of the levelir program. This has not been an isolated incident, but the last piece of a Russian space program known as ‘levelir’. Judging by their history, the objective of these “inspector satellites” is to periodically approach interest ships of other powers, especially American, to demonstrate certain capacities in orbit:

• In May 2025, Russia placed the Kosmos 2588 satellite in an orbital plane almost identical to the US 338 American satellite and began to perform periodic approaches

What if they were latent weapons? Russia describes these launches as “inspection missions”, but for the Pentagon, the explanation falls short. What remains to be inspected after three years? What these satellites do demonstrate is their ability to maintain a latent system to activate it years later with some of the most important spy assets in the United States in space, something that makes US military planners nervous.

If we add to these matrioshkas, potential “latent anti -attack weapons”, the intricate series of maneuvers he has been performing The trio of Russian ships Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583it is seen that Mother Russia is still able to check her opponents in the terrestrial orbit.

Image | Toño Ortiz (CC by-C-SA 2.0), Marco Langbroek (Sattrackcam)

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