Kosmos 2588 has been placed in the same orbital plane as the US spy satellite USA 338: another RPO?

click image to enlarge

 

Russia launched a new military satellite from Plesetsk today (23 May 2025), Kosmos 2588 (cat nr. 64095, COSPAR 2025-109A). It was placed in a 73-degree inclined, approximately 464 x 481 km orbit.

As first noted by Bart Hendrickx, the orbital plane is very close to that of a US military optical reconnaissance satellite, USA 338 (2022-117A). This can be seen in the diagram above. 

The difference in RAAN is only 0.11 degrees, the difference in inclination is a mere 0.6 degrees. Kosmos 2588 orbits just above USA 338. They can come to within 100 km of each other in this orbital configuration.

This is the fourth time in the last five years that Russia has placed a military satellite in the same orbital plane as and very close in orbital altitude to that of a US military optical reconnaissance satellite. 

The first time was in 2020 when they placed Kosmos 2542/2543 in the orbital plane of USA 245. That had the appearance of an 'inspector satellite' mission (although Kosmos 2543 later fired a projectile). The second time was in 2022 when Kosmos 2558 was placed in the orbital plane of USA 326. The third time was in 2024, when Kosmos 2576 was placed in the orbital plane of USA 314 (see my earlier blogpost here). 

The latter two occasions were different from the first, in that the Russian satellites in question stayed co-planar with the US satellites, rather than paying a relatively brief visit as Kosmos 2542/2543 had done. Rather than being inspector satellites, we might perhaps be seeing a counterspace capacity (a sleeping co-orbital ASAT capacity) being positioned in the latter two cases.

Which makes the current fourth instance highly interesting: the plot thickens. It will be interesting to see whether they keep this one co-planar as well.

It is possible that, as was the case with the launch of Kosmos 2576 a year ago, multiple payloads have been put in space. So far (less than a day after launch) only one has been catalogued.

We are seeing more and more of these RPO activities (in LEO as well as GEO) lately. Things in space are clearly getting more confrontational and passive-aggresive. A very worrying trend.