Those thrusters can be used to knock satellites out of alignment or even send them crashing back to Earth or drifting off into space.
Intelligence gathered by Luchs 1 and 2 could also help Russia coordinate less direct attacks on Western interests. Monitoring other satellites can reveal who is using them and where – information that can later be used for targeted ground-based jamming or hacking operations.
“Luch vehicles were often hovering and parking themselves close to geostationary satellites for several months at a time,” said Belinda Marchand, chief science officer at Slingshot Aerospace, a US-based company that tracks objects in space using ground-based sensors and artificial intelligence.
He said Luch 2 was currently “close” to Intelsat 39, a large geostationary satellite that serves Europe and Africa.
Since its launch in 2023, Luchs-2 will be hovering close to at least 17 other geostationary satellites over Europe to serve both commercial and government purposes, Slingshot data shows.
“They’ve visited the same family, the same operators – so you can infer that they have a specific objective or interest,” said Norbert Pouzin, senior orbital analyst at the French satellite tracking company Aldoria, which has also observed the Luch satellites. “These are all NATO-based operators.”
“Even if they can’t decrypt the messages, they can still extract a lot of information… for example, they can find out how the satellite is being used, find out the location of ground terminals,” he said.
Pozin also said that Russia now appears to be increasing its reconnaissance activity in space, having launched two new satellites last year, named Kosmos 2589 and Kosmos 2590. The vehicles appear to have similar mobility capabilities to the Luch-1 and Luch-2.
Kosmos 2589 is now headed toward the same range as geostationary satellites, which orbit 35,000 kilometers above Earth, Pozin said.
But Luch-1 may no longer be functional. On January 30, Earth telescopes observed a plume of gas coming from the satellite. Shortly thereafter, it appeared to be at least partially disintegrated.
“It looks like it started with something related to propulsion,” Marchand said. He further said that after this “there was definitely a fragmentation” and the satellite was “still wobbly.”
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