America’s Secret Space Arsenal After 30 years and 135 missions, it's curtains for NASA's Space Shuttle. The Shuttle Atlantis blasted off on Friday for one last rendezvous with the International Space Station, bringing to an end the current era of impressive -- but pricey and dangerous -- manned spaceflight. But never fear! America's space arsenal might be down four giant Shuttles, but there's still plenty of U.S. government hardware orbiting the Earth, much of it top secret. Counting commercial satellites with government missions, Washington has access to around 400 spacecraft -- four times as many as the number-two space power, Moscow. U.S. spacecraft include communications satellites, orbital cameras and other sensors, craft designed to eavesdrop on radio traffic and at least one secretive, robotic space plane similar to in shape to the retiring Shuttle. Here's a sampling of some of the "blackest" of America's secret space fleet. ______ <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pxN2ieE8N9A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> (NOSS -- Triangle UFOs explained) gallery link
They're launched like that so they can triangulate their target -- it would be pretty unusual to see a low orbit set of satellites in a perfect formation.
