"My estimate of the launch time, based on Space Force tracking, is 0605 UTC Oct 27."https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1717925911742292333
From the previous video...
CelesTrak has GP data for 2 objects from the launch (2023-165) of COSMOS 2570 atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Plesetsk Cosmodrome on Oct 27 at ~0605 UTC: russianspaceweb.com/lotos-s1-808.h…. Data for the launch can be found at: https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/table.php?INTDES=2023-165.
Quote from: Satori on 10/27/2023 05:45 pmFrom the previous video...Satori, why are you naming these pictures "Cosmos 2579" please ? Isn't it 2570 ?
Yes should be Kosmos 2570.
So far, the purpose of the subsatellite remains open to speculation. One possibility is that it is a product of the TsNIRTI institute in Moscow, which is the prime contractor for Lotos-S and builds its electronic intelligence payload (the overall design of the satellite is in the hands of KB Arsenal and it is integrated at the Arsenal Machine Building Factory). In recent years, TsNIRTI has published several articles on the possibility of building much smaller ELINT satellites that would use the so-called multi-position geolocation method to accurately determine the position of radio-emitting sources on the ground. This could be achieved by using a pair of satellites to simultaneously pick up signals from such a source or a single satellite that would pick up the signals from slightly different locations in its orbit. The latter proposal was the subject of a patent and an article published in 2020 and 2021 respectively.https://patents.s3.yandex.net/RU2734108C1_20201013.pdfhttps://raen.info/upload/redactorfiles/03-10_budk.pdfThe drawing in the attachment is from the article and shows a single satellite picking up signals from a ground-based radar from three different locations in its orbit. The satellite depicted here is a Lotos-S, but this must have been chosen arbitrarily because the article clearly refers to a small satellite.Another TsNIRTI article by some of the same authors says that the single-satellite geolocation method could be used to pinpoint the location of targets for electronic warfare satellites. https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=44335240As a reminder, KB Arsenal is working on a nuclear-powered satellite called Ekipazh (14F350) with an electronic warfare payload that may well be provided by TsNIRTI.According to the 2021 TsNIRTI article, the single-satellite geolocation method was to be tested “in real conditions on experimental products“, a possible sign that these were more than just paper studies. TsNIRTI (which has not yet built any satellites in house) could build such small satellites in cooperation with KB Arsenal or other organizations. For instance, it has close ties with the MIREA Russian Technological University (RTU MIREA) in Moscow, which has done some work on cubesats. As can be determined from court documentation, RTU MIREA also has some kind of role in Ekipazh.So Kosmos-2566 could potentially demonstrate the possibility of flying an ELINT payload on a small satellite, possibly paving the way for future constellations of such satellites that could among other things locate targets for electronic warfare satellites. I should caution though that there is no solid evidence linking Kosmos-2566 to the TsNIRTI research. Although it would make sense for TsNIRTI to launch such a satellite together with one of its own Lotos-S satellites, the parent satellite and the subsatellite do not necessarily have to be products of one and the same company.
....The latest evidence happened on Nov. 23, US Thanksgiving, when Russia’s Cosmos 2570 satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO) revealed itself to be a Matryoshka (nesting) doll system — comprising three consecutively smaller birds, performing up-close operations around each other, according to the company....With regard to Cosmos 2570, LeoLabs’s analysis said that based on Space Force’s data, the service’s 18th Space Defense Squadron, responsible for space domain awareness, lost track of it when it maneuvered shortly after launch, but that LeoLabs days later was able to find it and its daughter, called Object C. “We were able to track both objects quickly and send frequent updates. On November 24, we were the first to detect, catalog, and deliver alerts to the Joint Task Force – Space Defense (JCO) on a secondary object released by sub-satellite Object C before the public catalog was able to respond. This prompted urgent action by all parties to track and identify the new object, now called Object D,” said the LeoLabs analysis, provided to Breaking Defense....Then on Dec. 6, Cosmos 2570’s granddaughter began another maneuver, bringing it within less than 1 kilometer of its mother — extremely close and well beyond what is normally considered safe for orbital operations, Heath said. That move happened in “favorable lighting conditions,” suggesting that the granddaughter “has an electro-optical (EO) sensor payload.”
