The Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) is a series of
signals-intelligence satellites
A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scientif ...
that have conducted
electronic signals intelligence for the
U.S. Navy since the early 1970s.
[ ] The first series of satellites were codenamed "White Cloud" or "PARCAE", while second- and third-generation satellites have used the codenames "Ranger" and "Intruder".
The system is operated by the United States Navy, and its main purpose was
tactical geolocation
Geopositioning is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object or a person.
Geopositioning yields a set of Geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinates (such as latitude and longitude) in a given map datum ...
of
Soviet Navy
The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...
assets during the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
. NOSS involves
satellite clusters operating in
low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...
to detect radar and other electronic transmissions from ships at sea and locate them using the
time difference of arrival technique.
Satellites
:''* One satellite from each third generation pair is officially catalogued as debris''.
:data fro
Cost
The costs of the NOSS satellites (excluding costs for the launch vehicle), which were destroyed in a Titan IV launch failure in 1993, were US$800 million (inflation adjusted US$ billion in ).
See also
* Poppy (satellite)
* Yaogan
* CERES (satellite)
References
External links
NOSS @ astronautix.com
BBC - h2g2 - Naval Ocean Surveillance Satellites - a 'UFO'
{{US Reconnaissance Satellites
Reconnaissance satellites of the United States
Signals intelligence satellites
Military space program of the United States
Satellite series
Military equipment introduced in the 1970s
Derelict satellites orbiting Earth