Gen John Raymond, chief of space operations for the US Space Force, confirmed that two Russian satellites have been following a US spy satellite on Monday
A top Space Force official has lashed out at Russia for trailing a US spy satellite with two spacecraft.
Gen John Raymond, the chief of space operations for America's newly-minted Space Force, said the two Russian satellites began pursuing the multi-billion dollar US satellite in November and have at times flown within 100 miles it.
'This is unusual and disturbing behavior and has the potential to create a dangerous situation in space,' Raymond said in a statement to Business Insider.
'The United States finds these recent activities to be concerning and do not reflect the behavior of a responsible spacefaring nation.'
The US has raised concerns about the matter to Moscow through diplomatic channels, Raymond told Time magazine, which first reported the stalking on Monday.
The confrontation marks the first time the US military has publicly identified a direct threat to a specific American satellite by an adversary.
Pentagon, White House and Congressional backers have said that Russia's actions demonstrate the need for the Space Force, which became the sixth military branch when President Donald Trump signed the $738billion National Defense Authorization Act into law in December.
Space enthusiast Michael Thompson raised concerns one of the Russian satellite's maneuvers on Twitter late last month. He shared the graphic above which shows the path of the US satellite US 245 in blue and the Russian satellite Cosmos 2542 in purple
US military analysts first took note of the Russian mission when a spacecraft that was launched into orbit on November 26 - the Cosmos 2542 - unexpectedly split into two about two weeks later.
Closer inspection revealed that the second smaller satellite - Cosmos 2543 - had been effectively 'birthed' from the first.
'The way I picture it, in my mind, is like Russian nesting dolls,' Raymond told Time. 'The second satellite came out of the first satellite.'
Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed the separation on December 6 and said the purpose of the experiment was to 'assess the technical condition of domestic satellites', according to the TASS news agency.
The explanation was called into question in mid-January as analysts noticed the two satellites were flying close by the American satellite dubbed USA 245.
The satellite is one of four in a reconnaissance constellation codenamed Keyhole/CRYSTAL - KH-11 for short - which is operated by the National Reconnaissance Office, a secretive intelligence agency based in Virginia.
KH-11 satellites' sensors and cameras are said to be focused on foreign adversaries' top-secret military installations. They operate in a polar orbit several hundred miles above the Earth's surface, allowing them to cover its entirety.
One of those satellites, the USA 224, is widely believed to have taken the highly-detailed image of Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center that President Donald Trump posted on Twitter in August.
Pictured: Launch of a Soyuz 2-1v rocket carrying the Cosmos 2542 satellite
Space enthusiast Michael Thompson raised concerns about Cosmos 2542's maneuvers on Twitter late last month.
'This is all circumstantial evidence, but there are a hell of a lot of circumstances that make it look like a known Russian inspection satellite is currently inspecting a known US spy satellite,' Thompson tweeted on January 30.
He suggested that Cosmos 2542 may be getting close to USA 245 to take intelligence photos of the satellite or that it could be getting into a position to debilitate it.
Russia has a number of communications satellites positioned above the Earth that the Kremlin could use to gather intelligence or even disable or destroy other satellites, according to The Drive.
This could potentially usher in a new era of 'space war', where weaponized satellites in orbit attempt to gain ground on satellites from other nations.
Thompson shared the graphic above on Twitter which illustrates the distance between the two satellites, with dates on the x axis and kilometers on the y axis
Thompson said the satellites' orbital periods were less than one second apart, meaning that Cosmos 2542 is 'loitering around USA 245 in consistent view'
In the decades since humanity first launched satellites to orbit, there have only been four known collisions between two such objects in space.
But, experts say satellite crashes will become more common in the future.
The first occured in 1991, when Russia’s Cosmos 1934 was hit by a piece of Cosmos 926, according to ESA.
Five years later, France’s Cerise satellite was struck by a piece of an Ariane 4 rocket.
Then, in 2005, US upper stage was hit by a piece of a Chinese rocket’s third stage. In 2009 an Iridium satellite slammed into Russia’s Cosmos-2251.