The US thinks Russia has fired a new weapon into space that is equipped to take down satellites.
Pentagon officials have referred to Cosmos 2576, which was launched last week from western Russia, as “a counter space weapon”.
The Pentagon said it was keeping an eye on the issue and prepared to “protect and defend the space domain” and that it was in the “same orbit” as a US government satellite.
The Pentagon press secretary, Major General Patrick Ryder, stated on Tuesday that “Russia launched a satellite into low Earth orbit that we assess is likely a counter space weapon” and that it was “presumably capable of attacking other satellites.”
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Cosmos 2576 looks to be in the same orbit as America, according to space scientists.
According to space scientists, Cosmos 2576 seems to be in the same orbit as the USA 314 satellite from the United States.
Washington and Moscow’s representatives have been at odds over space weaponry at the UN for several weeks now, accusing each other of trying to militarize space.
Cosmos 2576 was launched on May 16 from Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome, around 500 miles north of Moscow, according to a US Space Command spokesman.
converting area into a combat zone
A representative for Russia’s foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, asserted earlier on Tuesday that the US was attempting to use space as a “arena for military confrontation.”
The launch, according to Russia’s national space agency Roskosmos, was “in the interests of the Russian Federation’s defense ministry.” According to the agency, the Soyuz-2.1b rocket served as the launch vehicle.
Russia has issued threats that US satellites supporting Ukrainian forces may become legal targets ever since it launched a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
Although it claimed that Russia had not yet used its “troubling” new space weapon, the White House hinted in February that it was working on one.
Russia is allegedly developing a variety of anti-satellite weapons, including a missile that was successfully launched on a defunct Soviet-era satellite in November 2021, according to a study published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, last year.
