what is this icon on control center about?
What is this setting refresh icon?
iPad (8th generation)
The icon indicates that your iPad is synchronising with "something". Yours is one of many reports seen in recent days. At present, pending confirmation by Apple, this icon is believed to have some relationship to post-update synchronisation tasks performed by your iPad after updating to iPadOS 18.x.
Apple's documentation is often slow to catch-up with new features. Here is another status icon - that appears briefly when connecting some USB-C hubs - that Apple have yet to add to their documentation: