Is a top secret Pentagon satellite making a rendezvous with the ISS?

SPECULATION [by a very experienced amateur satellite tracker in Europe] -- recent top secret DoD satellite MAY BE involved with rendezvous operations with the International Space Station. The DoD launch, at the time, was immediately tagged as a 'curiosity' [by me and others] because of its close [not perfect, but suggestively close] orbital insertion relative to the plane of the ISS. The degree of ISS crew/hardware cooperation with these hypothesized speculations could range from zero to non-zero, is the best we can guess for now.

sattrackcam.blogspot.nl...

a reply to: JimOberg

More technical details of the orbits [about 1.6 degrees out-of-plane] and forthcoming very close approaches [ less than 100 km] here from Ted Molczan, one of the top amateur satellite trackers in the world:


satobs.org...

a reply to: JimOberg

Forgive my Faux pas, I replied before the article opened. It's a spy satellite, perhaps it is making a close approach with a known object to calibrate sensors, cameras or other sensitive equipment on the space craft. Many spy satellite's serve multiple roles and unfortunately some of those instruments may not be able to be entirely calibrated on the ground.

Just my two cents.

I'm really on some "ISIS" brainwashing because all I read was "Is a top secret Pentagon satellite making a rendezvous with the ISIS?" and thinking to myself.."These guys got satellite capabilities?"

Time to log off...

a reply to: Aeshma

The X-37 doesn't have an interface with the ISS, and isn't scheduled to launch until at least November.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Hey Zaph, I edited my post after the article opened.

Thank you all the same, my understanding was the X37 was intended to run cargo and ferry runs to the space station along with it's other roles in the future. I understood it was not making these types of flight as of yet. Thank you for the information all the same.

a reply to: Aeshma

That's the C. The X-37B is flying classified missions for the Air Force and is a military program.

originally posted by: JimOberg
SPECULATION [by a very experienced amateur satellite tracker in Europe] -- recent top secret DoD satellite MAY BE involved with rendezvous operations with the International Space Station. The DoD launch, at the time, was immediately tagged as a 'curiosity' [by me and others] because of its close [not perfect, but suggestively close] orbital insertion relative to the plane of the ISS. The degree of ISS crew/hardware cooperation with these hypothesized speculations could range from zero to non-zero, is the best we can guess for now.

sattrackcam.blogspot.nl...

So it is a DOD satellite, but why should it be assumed that there should be rendezvous with such a space station as the ISS...as an International space station. Makes no sense to me should this satellite mission, permanent or otherwise be secret, or what it should be looking at, or where for that matter, maybe up rather than down or both.

originally posted by: JimOberg
SPECULATION [by a very experienced amateur satellite tracker in Europe] -- recent top secret DoD satellite MAY BE involved with rendezvous operations with the International Space Station. The DoD launch, at the time, was immediately tagged as a 'curiosity' [by me and others] because of its close [not perfect, but suggestively close] orbital insertion relative to the plane of the ISS. The degree of ISS crew/hardware cooperation with these hypothesized speculations could range from zero to non-zero, is the best we can guess for now.

sattrackcam.blogspot.nl...

Considering that the ISS currently includes at least one Russian (Yurchikhin is scheduled to stay aboard until September 3; Novitskiy is supposed to be coming back today - June 2 - but I don't know if he has technically disembarked yet or not) it would seem unlikely for the DOD to have a classified satellite practicing rendezvous operations.

Meh, they're just reloading it with those mini-sats that swarm and knock out/latch onto and hack other sats.

*shrug*

a reply to: PhloydPhan

You wrote:

"Considering that the ISS currently includes at least one Russian (Yurchikhin is scheduled to stay aboard until September 3; Novitskiy is supposed to be coming back today - June 2 - but I don't know if he has technically disembarked yet or not) it would seem unlikely for the DOD to have a classified satellite practicing rendezvous operations."

You assume that the PTB collective doesn't have secrets about space activities that may involve joint ventures outside the view of the media and public? I've reported before about such cooperation involving our collecting data with our "Big Ear" system from the Russian Mars shots and then piping it over to them by aggreement.

More speculations and questions..... satobs.org...