Russia's Cosmos 2612 Closes on ICEYE-X36, a US-Registered Radar Satellite Serving Ukraine
Leiden, 18 October 2026
Key points
- Marco Langbroek, a Dutch satellite tracker, reported Cosmos 2612 within 1–2 km of ICEYE-X36 at 18:15 UTC on 17 October, and on orbital elements a close approach at about 01:35 UTC on 18 October "to within a few hundred meters or possibly (much) closer"
- Cosmos 2612 manoeuvred again at about 12:26 UTC on 18 October and late on 19 October, back to X-36's altitude; on 21 October the two were about 480 km apart, and Langbroek sees no sign in X-36's orbit that it was hit
- Cosmos 2612 is one of six satellites launched from Plesetsk on 16 April; in May five of them manoeuvred into X-36's orbital plane, and from 30 September Cosmos 2612 began matching its altitude
- X-36, launched from Vandenberg in March 2024, is registered to ICEYE US and supplies radar imagery to Ukrainian forces; ICEYE, Washington and Helsinki have not commented
A Russian military satellite has passed close to a commercial radar satellite that supplies imagery to Ukraine, and has manoeuvred to stay with it.
Langbroek, who tracks satellites from Leiden, had doubted over the summer that Cosmos 2612 was aimed at X-36: the orbital planes matched, but close approaches were rare. The manoeuvres from 30 September changed his view; they synchronised altitude, eccentricity and period. According to the US Space Force's 18th Space Defense Squadron, as reported by Opex360, five of the six April satellites had fired their engines together in May to gather around X-36. Langbroek calls the operation "completely non-consensual" and attribution in space "very difficult": whether X-36 still works, only its users can say.
X-36 is registered in the United States, not Finland. In July ICEYE sold its constellation to European governments as imaging "free from ITAR restrictions"; this satellite belongs to the company's US subsidiary, so jurisdiction over it rests with Washington. Moscow told the UN in 2022, as Signal No. 170 recalled, that Western commercial satellites used in the war could become legitimate targets. The observable responses are a US or ICEYE statement, an evasive manoeuvre by X-36, or debris; inspection or signals collection would leave none of them.
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