The date is Christmas Eve, 2019, and deep in the heart of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, technicians working at the North American Aerospace Defense Command- otherwise known as NORAD- track the flight of a Russian rocket launch. In accordance with international regulations, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, formally announced the launch weeks before, and filed a flight path with the UN.

The launch is a curious one, as the launch trajectory doesn't follow the typical equatorial or polar orbital trajectories of most spacecraft. The Russians claim that the rocket contains a probe which will use the highly eccentric orbit to rendezvous with a medium-sized asteroid flying past the earth a few million miles away, itself on a highly eccentric orbit. The math checks out, and thus as NORAD tracks the launch entering space above the US, there is no reason for alarm.

Nonetheless, American space and ground-based imaging assets still track the curious Russian probe. The rocket seems to be smaller than anticipated for the launching of a deep space probe, but the Russians claim that their probe is powered by an ion engine, which doesn't require much fuel. Some inside of the American aerospace and defense sector are suspicious that the launch is actually a new secret Russian military satellite, and thus NORAD is ordered to track its trajectory carefully and detect if any sub-vehicles are released from the main body of the spacecraft as it reaches orbit.


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