Naval Ocean Surveillance System

The NOSS 3-4 duo (2007-027A & C) crossing through the Pleiades. Movement in this 10 second exposure is from top to bottom, the A object is leading.

A NOSS satellite Trio passes the Moon.

The Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS), is a series of SIGINT satellites which have conducted ELINT 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 of Soviet Navy assets during the Cold War. The NOSS satellites operate in clusters in low Earth orbit to detect radar and other electronic transmissions from ships at sea and locate them using the "Time Difference Of Arrival" technique.^[1]

Satellites

* - One satellite from each third generation pair is officially catalogued as debris

data from ,

NOSS 3-3 duo passing by Polaris (bright star at the bottom). Movement in this 12.3s exposure is from upper-left to bottom-right; the A object is leading. 06-Feb-2016, 18:52(UT+2), Kyiv

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$800 million (inflation adjusted US$ 1.3 billion in 2016).^[2]

See also

• Poppy (satellite)
• ELINT
• Yaogan
• CERES (satellite)

References

External links

• Augment-reality satellite viewing
• NOSS @ astronautix.com
• BBC - h2g2 - Naval Ocean Surveillance Satellites - a 'UFO'

United States reconnaissance satellites
IMINT	Photographic KH-1 Corona KH-2 Corona KH-3 Corona KH-4A Corona KH-4B Corona KH-5 Argon KH-6 Lanyard KH-7 Gambit KH-8 Gambit 3 KH-9 Hexagon KH-10 Dorian Electro-optical Samos KH-11 Kennan Misty Enhanced Imaging System Synthetic aperture radar Quill Lacrosse FIA Infrared
SIGINT	Low Earth orbit GRAB Poppy White Cloud Samos-F Highly elliptical orbit Jumpseat Trumpet Geosynchronous Earth orbit Canyon Magnum Mentor (Orion) Mercury Rhyolite/Aquacade Vortex
MASINT	Primary mission FORTE GPS DMSP Vela Secondary mission MIDAS DSP SBIRS STSS
Research and development	Primary mission MiTEx Secondary mission
Unknown	USA number USA-193