The hobby of "phantom hunting" began around the early 22nd century and peaked around the 2180s. The hobby had low to moderate popularity. Phantom hunting was often referred to by critics as a "snETe hunt", replacing the letters "ip" in the word snipe for the letters "E.T.".

The basis of phantom hunting was to try and verify the conspiracy theory that one or more cosmonauts died in space during the Space Race and were still adrift decades later in deep space. The deaths were supposedly covered up by Soviet and later Russian officials.

The hobby of phantom hunting began soon after Mach Effect Thrusters were in common use for small autonomous space drones. These small space drones were capable of achieving a maximum velocity near half the speed of light. Assuming any cosmonauts who died while in space kept traveling away from Earth at the fastest possible velocity that could be achieved during that time period due to Newton's first law of motion; a space probe traveling near half the speed of light would reach the drifting dead cosmonaut's craft within less than a day.

Phantom hunting was considered by critics at best to be an eccentric method of space exploration. Phantom hunters would use declassified Soviet and American documents to postulate about possible secret Soviet launches. The theoretical boundaries for a three-dimensional volume of space in which a drifting dead craft could be found would be calculated and probes would be sent to try and locate the hypothesized cosmonaut craft.

As of 2256 no evidence of dead cosmonauts in space has been confirmed through phantom hunting.

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