Unusual Behavior in GEO: Luch (Olymp-K)

This data repository accompanies Space Threat Assessment, a report series from the CSIS Aerospace Security Project.

This data repository visualizes the orbital position of the Russian Luch satellite—also referred to as Olymp-K by the U.S. government—from July 2017 to December 2020.

Unlike most objects in the geostationary belt, Luch (Olymp-K) made a series of orbital maneuvers after it reached its destination orbital regime, varying its position relative to the Earth and neighboring satellites and spurring several accusations of Russian misbehavior by other satellite operators.¹ From July 2017 to December 2020—the time period depicted in the interactive diagram—Luch (Olymp-K) occupied at least 16 distinct orbital positions.

In 2015, an essay published in The Space Review documented early movements of the Russian satellite, noting its close proximity to two Intelsat satellites.² Later, SpaceNews reported an Intelsat executive’s response to the close approach, which suggested that Luch’s behavior was “not normal” and “concerned” Intelsat.³ Years later, the French Minister of the Armed Services made similar statements about the Russian satellite’s behavior as it related to the French-Italian satellite Athena-Fidus.⁴

The table below describes a more complete history of Luch (Olymp-K)’s orbital history, including several of the satellite’s nearest neighbors.

Learn more about the potential consequences of such behavior on orbit, including a broader look at Russia’s counterspace weapon activities in this year’s edition of Space Threat Assessment.

Methodology

This data visualization relies on one principal data source: the Space-Track.org catalog of all space objects, provided by the U.S. Air Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron.³²

The orbital position data for Luch (Olymp-K) from July 2017 to December 2020—shown in orange in the interactive diagram—was derived from the two-line element (TLE) data for the satellite, available at Space-Track.org. The TLE for a space object is a measurement of the object’s approximate orbit (its inclination, right ascension of the ascending node, eccentricity, and argument of perigee) and its position on that orbit (its mean anomaly). This data was transformed into a time-dependent longitude position using PyEphem, a publicly-available Python package for high-precision astronomy computations.³³ Although Space-Track.org often provides more than one TLE for Luch (Olymp-K) per day during the time period depicted, this data repository shows just one longitudinal position per day, for clarity. Longitude measurements are propagated to midnight on each day.

To identify Luch’s neighboring satellites, the longitude transformation process was repeated for all satellites in the geosynchronous region (defined as geostationary altitude plus or minus 200 km, with inclinations between -15 and 15 degrees) from Luch’s launch in September 2014 until December 2020.³⁴ Satellites that sustained the closest longitude measurement to Luch for a period of time are known as the satellite’s nearest neighbor. Satellites that remained Luch’s nearest neighbor for at least one week, coming closer than 0.075° (approximately 55 km) have been included in the above table.

How far apart are satellites in GEO during normal operations? The median distance between satellites, according to an analysis of all GEO satellites included in the Space-Track.org catalog, is approximately 0.28° or about 207 km. Since not all satellites are included in the U.S. Air Force’s space object database—the 18th Space Control Squadron does not provide orbital data for classified U.S. satellites, for example—this methodology likely over-approximates separation distances.

About 25% of GEO satellites are separated by less than 0.11° (or about 80 km), while 75% of GEO satellites are separated by less than 0.69° (or about 508 km).

Most satellites—about 90%—are separated from their neighbors by more than 25 km. Similarly, about 96% of satellites are separated from their neighbors by more than 10 km.