Russia’s ‘Cosmos-2589’ satellite might be one to watch in terms of potential continued Moscow spying on EU signals, after an older model joined a space “graveyard”, a leading space writer has said.
Cosmos-2589 has been “slowly manoeuvring to geostationary orbit [GEO], which it hasn’t reached yet,” since last November, said Bart Hendrickx, a Belgian writer on satellite technology, who contributes to The Space Review magazine.
“It’s not known if Cosmos-2589 is an eavesdropping satellite like the two ‘Luch’ satellites and, if so, that it’s specifically going to target European satellites. We don’t know what it will be doing when it reaches GEO [some 36,000km above Earth],” he said.
Cosmos-2589 was made by Russian firm AO Reshetnev, which also made Luch-class eavesdropping satellites.
Its Cosmos-unit might be an entirely different model.
But Cosmos-2589 caused extra intrigue because a few days after it was launched, last June, it deployed a sub-satellite, called Cosmos-2590, which still remained in a “highly elliptical orbit” around the globe.
The nature of its orbit meant “the baby satellite does not really pose a threat to GEO objects. It does regularly cross the GEO belt, but any encounters it has with other satellites are very brief,” said Hendrickx.
“It looks like [Russian firm] TsNIIKhM … built the sub-satellite,” he said.
And for their part, Russia’s Luch 1 and Luch 2 satellites had been openly spying on Western communication satellites since 2014.
“Since its launch in March 2023, Luch-2 has parked itself near at least seven satellites, five European satellites and two Intelsats,” said Hendrickx.
“There are strong indications that they [the Luchs] are operated by the FSB [Russia’s domestic intelligence service], so not the military,” he added.
“The US [also] has two secretive satellites that have been doing exactly the same as the two Luch satellites … So I guess they’re even,” he said
“To the best of my knowledge, China has no such satellites,” he added.
“China has also conducted rendezvous and proximity operations in geostationary orbit, but it is not clear if they were intended for eavesdropping on other satellites,” he said.
‘Graveyard orbit’
But amid peaking global tensions, the FSB’s capabilities halved last October when Luch 1 became defunct, the Belgian expert noted.
“It was placed into a so-called ‘graveyard orbit’ in October after finishing its 11-year mission”, he said.
And the old Luch-class Russian satellites were not seen as being capable of jamming or crashing EU space assets, despite fears voiced in an article in the FT newspaper on Wednesday.
“There are no indications whatsoever that they are capable of jamming satellites … even if they can intercept the command uplink, I don’t think that automatically allows them to manipulate the satellites,” said Hendrickx.
EU counter-measures
And the Russian threat was being mitigated by German-made encryption systems, the EU Commission said.
“All EU-owned satellites have robust cryptographic protection,” it told EUobserver.
“This applies to all our EU-owned satellites: Galileo, Copernicus, and IRIS². Galileo, our most strategic system, is protected by governmental cryptographic algorithms provided by Germany,” it added.
But it did concede the EU had weak spots, adding: “In some specific cases, commercial satellites lack encryption due to high costs or outdated designs”.
Aside from GEO signals interception, Russia has a history of anti-EU and Ukraine satellite interference.
It has spoofed signals from GPS satellites in medium Earth orbit of 20,000km to harass aviation and hide its oil tankers.
It has launched anti-satellite satellites, which stalk US surveillance units at low Earth orbits of 500km.
It has conducted nuclear sabre-rattling in space.
And Russia was working hand-in-hand with China on military space technology, as seen in Russia’s use of the Chinese-made ‘Stilsat-1’ surveillance satellite to spy on Ukraine and Poland, Hendrickx previously reported.
EU states have blacklisted Chinese satellite technology firms in previous rounds of Russia sanctions.
But EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday the 20th round of EU sanctions on Russia would focus on “energy, financial services, and trade”, rather than new dual-use or high-tech export restrictions.
The sanctions, due to cover maritime services for Russian oil tankers, and new bans on Russia crypto-traders, were to be in place by 24 February — the four-year anniversary of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine.
