An ICEYE synthetic aperture radar satellite image of the Kerch Strait Bridge, or Kerch Bridge, which connects mainland Russia with Crimea. (Image credit: ICEYE)

A Russian satellite just took a very close look at an American spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

A few days ago, the snooping satellite Kosmos 2612 rendezvoused with ICEYE-X36, a commercial craft that observes our planet using synthetic aperture radar (SAR).

The close encounter, which occurred between Oct. 15 and Oct. 19, was reported by Marco Langbroek and other satellite trackers, with Langbroek calling it "a worrisome cat-and-mouse game" in orbit. The rendezvous has garnered a lot of attention in space circles, because it was non-consensual and startlingly close; at one point, the two spacecraft may have been separated by just a few meters.…