In the USA, the approach of one of the Russian spacecraft (number 40258 in the catalog of the North American Aerospace Defense Command) of the Luch series to the Intelsat 36 commercial satellite was shown on a computer model. The corresponding video was published by the American company COMSPOC on Vimeo.
The incident occurred, according to the statements of the American side, in November 2019, when the Luch approached Intelsat 36 at a distance of 1.8 kilometers.
"If they (Russians or Chinese - approx. "Tapes.<url>") are going to do something like this approach to another satellite, this can probably be assessed as irresponsible behavior," Jim Cooper, head of the situational awareness department in space at COMSPOC, told the American edition of Breaking Defense.
The expert noted that such a rapprochement could end in disaster.
Breaking Defense claims that in total, the Luch series spacecraft was approaching more than two dozen satellites.
In April 2015, according to Space News, the Russian spacecraft was at a distance of about ten kilometers from the Intelsat 901 satellite, which is why the Pentagon considered the Russian product an anti-satellite weapon.
Ivan Potapov
