Does Russia have an orbiting space weapon?

The orbital maneuvers of a mysterious object Russia launched earlier this year have raised concerns that the satellite may be a space weapon of some sort.

The speculation centers on "Object 2014-28E," which Russia lofted along with three military communications satellites in May. Russian officials did not declare the object as part of the launch, and it was originally thought to be space junk. But satellite trackers have watched it perform a number of interesting maneuvers over the past few weeks, theFinancial Times reportedMonday (Nov. 17).

Last weekend, for example, 2014-28E apparently met up with the remnants of a rocket stage that helped the object reach orbit. [The Most Destructive Space Weapons Concepts]

As a result, some space analysts wonder if Object 2014-28E could be part of ananti-satellite program perhaps a revived version of the Cold War-era "Istrebitel Sputnikov" ("satellite killer") project, which Russian officials have said was retired when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.

Military officials have long regarded the ability to destroy or disable another country's satellites as a key national-security capability. The Soviet Union is not the only nation known to have worked on developing such technology; China destroyed one of its own weather satellites in a 2007 test that spawned a huge cloud oforbital debris, and the United States blew up one of its own defunct spacecraft in 2008.

The concern about Object 2014-28E is legitimate, said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. But she cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying that Russia could have a number of purposes in mind for the technology that 2014-28E may be testing out.

"Anysatellitewith the capability to maneuver has the potential to be a weapon," Johnson-Freese told Space.com. "But does that mean necessarily that all maneuverable satellites are weapons? No."

The United States has also worked to develop maneuverable-satellite technology, she noted, citing the Air Force's Experimental Satellite System-11 (XSS-11) and NASA's DART (Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) spacecraft, both of which launched in 2005. Further, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) managed a mission calledOrbital Express, which launched in 2007 to test out satellite-servicing tech.

"When we did DART and XSS-11, other countries went into panic mode you know, 'The U.S. has space weapons,'" Johnson-Freese said. "The first thing we did was assuage those concerns and say, 'No, no. That's not what it is. It's just a maneuverable satellite.' But any time you have dual-use technology, there are going to be concerns."

And pretty much all space technology is dual-use, said Brian Weeden, a technical adviser with the Secure World Foundation (a nonprofit organization dedicated to space sustainability) and a former orbital analyst with the Air Force. For example, spacecraft capable of orbital rendezvous operations could help a nation inspect, service andrefuel its satellites, or deorbit defunct craft to help mitigate the growing space-junk problem.

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Does Russia have an orbiting space weapon?