Back in December 2013, Russia launched a trio of Rodnik military communications satellites, and a fourth unknown object, on board a Rokot/Briz-KM rocket. At the time, Russia didn’t acknowledge the presence of the fourth object — known only as Kosmos 2499 — but for obvious reasons launches are very closely watched by foreign governments and civilian satellite observers. The US military originally thought it was just a piece of debris, but one independent observer — Robert Christy — had seen this “debris” fire its engines to carry out some maneuvers. Eventually, in May 2014 Russia told the United Nations that there had actually been four satellites on board the rocket — though it still declined to say what that fourth satellite was actually doing.
Read More