Three satellites traveling together

[Dave Anderson]

To all,

A group of us witnessed an event we've never seen before on 9-5-99
at about 11pm CDT and we were curious if any of you
had an answer. It looked like three satellites in a triangular
formation traveling from the northeast to the southwest over our
location in Minnesota. Roughly 46.40N 94.13W. We had been watching
satellites much of the evening interrupted by an occasional aircraft.
These definitely looked like satellites and were traveling at a very
typical speed. The reflected light from each of them was the same as
could be seen with the naked eye. We've watched the shuttle orbiter and
MIR
flying in close proximity before but had never seen three satellites
this close together.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Dave

[Jens Lerch]

>Any ideas?

You have seen one of the NOSS clusters.
This is the most frequently asked question on
sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe .

--
Jens Lerch <jle...@geocities.com>
===========================================
New at http://jens.lerch.home.pages.de/
Korolov's 1955 designs of suborbital manned capsules.
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[Doug Jones]

I seem to recall a mission (US Air Force?) using an array of smallsats in a
formation orbit. I'll see if I can track down a reference...

Dave Anderson wrote:
>
> To all,

>
> A group of us witnessed an event we've never seen before on 9-5-99
> at about 11pm CDT and we were curious if any of you
> had an answer. It looked like three satellites in a triangular
> formation traveling from the northeast to the southwest over our
> location in Minnesota. Roughly 46.40N 94.13W. We had been watching
> satellites much of the evening interrupted by an occasional aircraft.
> These definitely looked like satellites and were traveling at a very
> typical speed. The reflected light from each of them was the same as
> could be seen with the naked eye. We've watched the shuttle orbiter and
> MIR
> flying in close proximity before but had never seen three satellites
> this close together.
>
> Any ideas?
>

> Thanks,
>
> Dave

--
Doug Jones, Rocket Plumber

[John Schilling]

Doug Jones <ran...@qnet.com> writes:

>I seem to recall a mission (US Air Force?) using an array of smallsats in a
>formation orbit. I'll see if I can track down a reference...

We've got plenty of smallsats in formation pictures on viewgraphs, none
in actual orbits.

MightySat II.2 is scheduled for launch in April '02, with one ~180 kg
satellite and two ~10 kg microsatellites. Experimental payloads, don't
know all the details. We just supply propulsion systems here.

If there are no show-stoppers there, the first TechSat 21 demo goes up
in '03 or '04, with three ~100 kg smallsats. Second demo flight around
'07, twelve to twenty smallsats. These would be sparse-aperture phased
array radar demonstrators, as predecessors to an operational system.

AFIK, that's about all there is for Air Force smallsat formations at
the current time.

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