A Russian spy satellite has carried out yet another suspicious maneuver in the Geosynchronous Orbit, as reported by Slingshot Aerospace.

The Russian spacecraft – named Luch (Olymp) 2 – has a record of approaching multiple geo spacecraft in orbit since 2023 and it had kept on changing its locations within a matter of months.

The continuous tracking had helped its identification as an ‘interloper,’ much like its predecessor – Luch (Olymp).

Slingshot Aerospace’s Machine Learning (ML) – based object profiling engine tracked the most recent large maneuver by the Russian spacecraft on June 23.

Tracking the Russian spy satellite

After Slingshot Global Sensor Network (SGSN) received the initial maneuver alert on Luch 2, it increased the surveillance around it.

This was done to “enable additional detailed insights into the nature of the maneuver as it began drifting past a number of spacecraft in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO).”

As per Slingshot’s software calculations, the Russian satellite is next going to come really close to a US satellite in the GEO.

“Slingshot’s pattern of life software also predicted which satellite Luch 2 would visit next: USA Intelsat 1002 [Norad ID 28358] at ~1° W,” a post on X by Slingshot Aerospace read.

Further, since June 23 the Russian spacecraft seems to have made changes in its trajectory and speed which hints at it trying to come to a stop near the US satellite.

“Luch 2 is expected to perform an additional maneuver to stop its drift near Intelsat 1002 on June 28 if it continues its past pattern of behavior,” the company says in a post on X.

The nearest it had come to any communications satellite since its operation began in March 2023 was with the “Eutelsat’s KA-SAT 9A at a distance of approximately 20 km.”

Slingshot says it is continuously tracking the Luch 2 and will keep reporting on the maneuvers it is going to make in the days ahead.

The announcement from Slingshot came right after a Russian satellite suffered an explosion in low Earth orbit, creating a debris cloud that forced the astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) to take shelter. 

Thankfully, no collisions occurred, and the ISS resumed normal operations.

The satellite, Resurs P1, shattered into over 100 pieces on June 26. 

Slingshot Aerospace’s AI system -Agatha

Earlier this month, Slingshot had announced the creation of a new artificial intelligence (AI) system called Agatha that can identify anomalous spacecraft within large satellite constellations.

Slingshot Aerospace said it had worked with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create the new AI system.

According to the company, Agatha had been trained on over 60 years of simulated constellation data, according to the company.

The company said, “Agatha AI incorporates cutting-edge approaches to AI data analysis, including inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) – a technique that uses AI to evaluate behaviors and identify the policies and intentions of the objects it tracks.”

The IRL technique goes beyond keeping track of individual outlier maneuvers. It can also focus on the more important and strategic question of why the satellites in question are exhibiting those behaviors and what their intentions are.

The system also doesn’t need cues to be fed to it, as it has a ‘data-agnostic model’ that can ingest great volumes of information and identify anomalies as it keeps on searching for more.

Agatha has been developed under Slingshot’s PRECOG program, which began in March 2023, and its results were submitted to DARPA in January 2024.