Crystal clear sky, White Mountains, NH (checking out satellites) tracking a satellite it stopped, four (whatevers) shot out 4 direction

UFO or Satellite/s		(approximately early autumn 1979)   My best friend and I went camping one more time before school kicked in for the year. We often camped in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, usually hitch hiking from Boston and back again.
After camping over the weekend we started out heading for home it was late in the day/early evening so we decided we would hang out one more night.
Not wanting to set up a tent or light a fire, we decided to crawl into our down sleeping bags to keep warm and just go to sleep. We used the porch of the old ranger’s station in Franconia Notch at the base of where “The Old Man of The Mountain” used to be. (Above profile lake)  There was already snow in the mountains and the wind was whipping and freezing so we turned the log benches on their sides and slept behind them.
We got up real early because the moon was just coming up and reflecting off the lake (approximately 3:00 AM), It was so beautiful out so we walked around a bit on the side of the highway (next to the lake) so we could get a clear view of the sky.
The sky was so clear you could almost reach out and touch the stars.
We always liked to look for and track satellites across the sky (which was easy to do in the mountains away from the city lights) especially this morning since the sky was so clear.
Spotting a couple of satellites over a period of a half hour we started to walk back to the rangers cabin, “lets see if we can spot one more” before loosing the view under the cabins porch roof.
Looking up we both spotted a satellite, I remember saying; “Cool, huh”? Then it just stopped and we said at the same time: “where did it go”?  In one split second four additional (whatever’s’?) shot out across the sky in four opposite directions from where we were looking.
These four objects traveled across the sky in four directions beyond and out of our site, then just as fast they all came back to the same spot where we last saw the satellite stop.
It then continued across the sky as any normal satellite would.
In my opinion unless we have the technology to create a spacecraft that can travel at the speeds we witnessed that morning, (Satellite speed) then shoot out four additional objects at approximately six to ten times faster than the original track of what we thought was a satellite and at the distances all four objects traveled and back again is beyond our comprehension.
It almost seemed like it was creating a grid and mapping the area. Like taking a picture of the mountains or something?  Who knows how many stops it was making and how many times it was projecting out these four objects.
Source of report indicates that the date of the incident is approximate.  PD