Russian space companies are selling Chinese satellite imagery as images from their own spacecraft. Bart Hendrickx, a researcher who studies Russia’s space program, uncovered the practice and published his findings in The Space Review. Meduza explains how he discovered it and whether Chinese satellites have been passed off as Russian before.

What kinds of satellites and images are we talking about?

A particular type of Earth observation satellite: radar satellites, also known as SAR satellites.

The vast majority of spacecraft used to image our planet’s surface carry digital cameras that capture visible or sometimes infrared light. (Meduza recently reported on how infrared imagery can help monitor Russia’s oil industry following Ukrainian strikes.) But optical and infrared imaging from space have a weakness: If clouds cover the area or it receives no sunlight, nothing on the ground will be visible.

Radar satellites produce images using radio signals reflected off the surface rather than visible or infrared light. Like radar antennas, they can therefore “see” at night and through clouds.

Russia currently has just 15 civilian Earth observation satellites, compared with more than 50 in the United States. Russia’s fleet includes the Elektro, Meteor, and Arktika-M weather satellite series and the Resurs-P series of high-resolution imaging satellites. Only two are radar imaging satellites: Kondor-FKA-1 and Kondor-FKA. The exact number of military Earth observation satellites, such as the Pion-NKS radar satellite developed for the Russian Navy, is unknown.

Shortages of Earth observation and communications satellites, along with the general sluggishness of established manufacturers that are part of Roscosmos, are increasingly pushing the state to turn to private space companies. In December 2025, Roscosmos head Dmitry Bakanov said privately owned satellites would account for 90% of Russia’s entire civilian satellite fleet by 2030.

A prominent private space venture supplying data to the state is the “Russian Starlink,” a constellation of communications satellites in low Earth orbit being developed by the private company Bureau 1440. Geoscan and Sputnix are also building their own Earth observation spacecraft, mostly small satellites built to the CubeSat standard.

Novy Kosmos joined these manufacturers in 2022, announcing plans to build its own radar satellite, Oculus.

Anton Alekseyev, a former adviser to the Rostov’s governor on digital development and digital transformation, founded Novy Kosmos in 2021. Before starting work on Oculus, the company had launched just one experimental satellite. In 2023, it built ArcCube-01 using the CubeSat platform. The spacecraft was intended for data transmission experiments conducted by schoolchildren from Rostov. In 2025, the United States placed the company under sanctions targeting Russia’s aerospace sector.

What is the Oculus project?

According to its developers, the Oculus satellite is intended for “round-the-clock, all-weather monitoring of the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic” and for protecting “oil and gas industry facilities.”

In 2025, Alekseyev said the spacecraft had cost more than 1 billion rubles to manufacture, compared with about 5 billion for foreign equivalents. He also said roughly 80% of the satellite’s components would be Russian-made.

That same year, TASS reported that Oculus could be launched into orbit within three years of the start of the next phase of work.

Then, unexpectedly, in 2026, three years ahead of schedule, Oculus-1 began operating. Bakanov personally reported the news to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Around the same time, a platform for ordering Oculus imagery appeared on the Novy Kosmos website.

What’s strange about that?

Activity in space is easy to monitor: All objects in orbit larger than 10 centimeters are cataloged, assigned identifiers, and constantly tracked.

Any country that puts a satellite into orbit must submit information about it to the United Nations. Space agencies and the press report every launch. It is simply impossible to put something into orbit unnoticed.

Even launches by countries such as Iran and North Korea are documented in detail. Amateur astronomers follow in minute detail the orbital changes of even secret inspection satellites, about which nothing has been officially disclosed beyond the fact that they were launched.

Yet neither Roscosmos nor Novy Kosmos has released any details about the Oculus launch, and there have been no media reports about it either. The spacecraft does not appear in U.S. Space Force catalogs, and no one knows its orbital parameters. So what exactly was the Roscosmos head reporting to Mishustin?

Hendrickx, an independent researcher, noticed this discrepancy and could find no data on a launch of the spacecraft in 2026. That prompted him to examine Novy Kosmos’ documentation more closely.

What did he find?

Hendrickx found orbital parameters for Oculus-1 and Oculus-2, along with specifications for their radar antennas, in a user manual published on the company’s Yandex Disk. The manual covers the system for ordering and processing satellite imagery through the Novy Kosmos website.

According to the document, the spacecraft were to orbit at average altitudes of 530 and 535 kilometers, with an orbital inclination of 97.5 degrees, crossing the equator from north to south at around 10:30 a.m. local time. These parameters did not match any Russian spacecraft launched in 2026, including those launched for military purposes. Hendrickx then examined Chinese radar satellites with antennas operating in the same Ku band as Oculus-1.

Oculus-1’s orbital parameters turned out to be almost identical to those of Taijing-4-03, a satellite launched by MinoSpace in 2024. The Chinese satellite also has an orbital inclination of 97.5 degrees and was initially placed in orbit at an altitude of 530 kilometers. The imaging modes match as well. There are some differences, however, because the Chinese satellite has gradually descended from 530 to 385 kilometers since its launch.

Another Russian spacecraft, Oculus-2, which the manufacturer also says it built itself, has an antenna operating in the X band. Hendrickx suspects it is also Chinese, though he has not conclusively matched it to a specific satellite. He considers Dongpo-16, made by the same company, MinoSpace, the most likely candidate. Another possibility is Juntian-1-04A, developed by Juntian Space Technology.

After the first part of Hendrickx’s investigation was published on October 12, Novy Kosmos updated its user manual. The document became one page shorter: The company removed the Oculus-1 parameters that had made it possible to identify it as China’s Taijing-4-03 and deleted a table listing Oculus-2’s imaging modes.

Novy Kosmos apparently is not the only company passing off Chinese satellites as spacecraft it developed itself. Hendrickx believes the Russian space startup L5 has done the same, presenting the Chinese satellite Chaohu-1 as its own.

L5 founder and CEO Dmitry Monakhov has said the startup has “one spacecraft deployed” and plans to launch four more radar satellites. Yet the company’s website says it is still developing the spacecraft’s radar antenna, with flight tests not scheduled until 2027. Another section says the company has used two spacecraft to capture imagery in the Arctic, without specifying which ones.

Monakhov’s presentation called the L5 satellite Elsat-1. Other presentations at the same conference mentioned a radar satellite designated IL5, TY39. The Chinese company Spacety is known to use the prefix TY in its spacecraft names. But the evidence goes beyond the prefix: The satellite’s imaging specifications, as listed on L5’s website, match those of China’s Chaohu-1 exactly.

Are these satellites connected to the Russia–Ukraine war?

It is not yet known for certain whether data from the Oculus satellites — or the Chinese satellites apparently being passed off as Oculus — is being used for military purposes. The answer is most likely yes: The Oculus project’s stated goals explicitly include “defense.”

Other private Earth observation companies have previously worked closely with the Russian military and even the Wagner Group. So both the practice of private companies passing off Chinese spacecraft as their own and cooperation with the military have precedents.

For example, Stilspace uses a Chinese-made satellite, including for military purposes, although it has not publicly acknowledged doing so. Hendrickx identified Taijing-3-02, also made by MinoSpace, as the likely satellite operating under the name Stilsat-1. Britain even placed MinoSpace, a Chinese company, under sanctions for supplying data to the Russian military.

Russia and China have developed very close ties in space in recent years. The research firm Kharon found that, from 2021 to 2025, Chinese companies launched more than 20 satellites for operators involved in supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as for Iran’s armed forces. Some of these spacecraft have direct links to organizations within China’s armed forces. The Chinese military controls the Jiuquan launch site, where all the launches examined in the study took place.