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NASA Ponders What To Do With a Pair of Free Space Telescopes
scibri writes "A few months ago, the secretive National Reconnaissance Office gave NASA two Hubble-sized space telescopes that it didn't want anymore. Now the space agency has to figure out what to do with them, and whether it can afford it. The leading candidate to use one of the telescopes is the the proposed Wide-Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST), which would search for the imprint of dark energy, find exoplanets and study star-forming regions of the Galaxy. The NRO telescope could speed up the mission, but may end up costing more in the long run."
A few issues with re-purposing the NRO satellite: higher launch costs because it's bigger, it can't see as far or as much IR (but it can see fainter objects, and could be used in planet detection), and the need for a bigger camera.
Do you have any idea how many millennia it would take to send these "above and below the galactic disk"?
Let alone the strength of a transmitter that would be necessary to facilitate data transmissions of the imagery collected from such a location?
Or the ability to operate when sufficiently removed from a star to facilitate energy collection?
Not to say that it wouldn't be a particularly cool idea, but wildly impractical with our current state of technology.
Thirty four characters live here.
Getting time on the big telescopes has always been a bit of a trial since they are a limited resource and there are a lot of people who want to use them.
These telescopes do not need some special unique mission/purpose.. just having more capacity and schedule time for a wider group of scientists would be worthwhile right there, at least to the people who get time on them.
I mean an Astronomer with a job is a rare thing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Make the first set of space binoculars
I always found it funny how NASA used the picture-taking satellites as telescopes, while the NRO and DoD uses them more like microscopes.
To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing.
I have a cute neighbor...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Take a googletour of the newer ground-based visible-spectrum telescopes. Replete w/ new mirror technology and advance adaptive optic systems, these outperform any telescope that can be put into space -- but just in the visible.
The only good reason to launch a telescope is to do IR and UV work, i.e. wavelengths that are significantly absorbed by the atmosphere.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Can't have enough stuff looking for possible collision sources, can we?
Or am I just another paranoid, SysFy Channel watching meat bag?
dreaded scurrilous bit-twiddler from Oklahoma
No, government thinks as follows: "I need to perform legislative and administrative acts to favour the people who regularly donate to my campaign or promise me a cushy consultancy after I leave government."
Anything else is incidental.
How come I never seem to find anything cool when I go to a yard sale.
and use the money to build something you really want. Has nobody here gotten useless (to you) tech from a relative for your birthday? Stick those puppies on ebay and go get some real space science stuff.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I say allow the Open community to use them to create an Open Space Exploration Foundation....
Depth Perception
Binocular galactic vision!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Let me guess, local pickup only.
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Gift-Tax
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Matched pair of shooting stars?
>> They're both still on the ground, dumbass.
Nevermind. Sell them to China or Russian and then use the money for general funding.
Dear NASA, Regarding the two satellites that the NRO wants to give you. Please take them and sell them to Google. Then use that money to get a working space program together.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
While NASA literally struggled to raise funds to build one Hubble, the NRO had the funds to build many more than three "Hubbles."
(The NRO showed two completed and parts for a third, imagine how many others actually went into space)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Turn them back towards earth and get some super awesome pictures of topless French beachers. Duh.
They're not in space, they are air force satelites that were never launched.
Areceibo was originally an Air Force experiment that got turned over to NASA. They had to do a major workover on it though to get it useful for radio astronomy.
Gotta wonder what they are flying now. Keep in mind that these huge telescopes are not pointed at the cosmos.
Aside from the political stuff I have a serious scientific question, one end of a scope is the room temp end pointed at the (on average) room temp earth all the time, and the other end of a scope alternates between hot sunlight and frozen deep space every orbit. From a technical perspective, are there modifications to the thermal system required, and if so are they the "expense" they're complaining about? If it's cheaper technologically to continue to point "down" I would imagine there's some interesting earth science they could do.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Interferometer side by side, seriously. Takes a bit of additional support hardware of course.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
that was the most insightful thing i've read on /. in some time. but i have to mod points (thus is life)
Just shows the difference between the level and scrutiny of funding between the military/intelligence sector and the civilian sector. NASA has to go through a long period of request and debate to get a space telescope, while the military just builds a few too many with no comment from anyone.
At the risk of getting people to read some of TFA, here are some quotes from the original article:
They’re “space qualified,” as NASA puts it
“They’re not state-of-the-art spy satellites, but they are probably still state-of-the-art optics.”
The spy telescopes have a feature that civilian space telescopes lack: a maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more-focused images, said David Spergel, a Princeton University astrophysicist...The new telescopes are “actually better than the Hubble. They’re the same size, but the optical design is such that you can put a broader set of instruments on the back,”
From that I gather that since Hubble point at earth could resolve a dime laying on the ground, and that's not as good as current state-of-the-art spy satellites, that the US government seems to have a need to check our hair for lice from orbit.
How about Nasa and Google ( or another interested business/third party) come together and make a complete, consistent, as-detailed-as-hubble map of the sky? Like Google Sky, but with consistent snaps of the quality that would surpass any ground based telescope? After the first run, do a second and third scan, with perhaps a year or two between runs. With a bit of analysis - software or otherwise - it should be possible to develop a detailed _dynamic_ picture at various scales. This would essentially present a huge opportunity for both, professional and amateur astronomers. Almost like everybody having their own hubble?
Maybe Planetary Resources could buy them to map asteroids for mining.
The Sloan Sky Survey has been doing this for a decade, on its 7th(?) round of mapping the whole sky. The Dark Energy Survey just recorded its test images (first light). At the end of the decade the Synoptic survey will map the sky every week recording petabytes a year. Much of this data will be available to public who may have time to look at things the professionals miss. (I probably overlooked a few projects too).
I am surprised how many have been funded in the past decade. Many of these approach a billion dollars each. Not only do you include construction costs, but operational costs of at least 10% of its construction cost a year. In the current economic climate, not only are good ideas not being built, but some of the older scopes are being de-funded.
Politicians are undependable. Why not tap their space exploration / science supporters directly?
Actually for most satellites the launch cost tends to be far lower than the value of the object. Custom made; extremely carefully; out of very exotic materials (just study up on the solar panels they use for example). These probably really do deliver real value if someone can work out how to use them effectively. Plus, the instruments you use for spying into people's homes are probably a bit different from (and much more expensive than) the ones you use for seeing far off black holes. If they were already up and installed then a) the scientists wouldn't be allowed the satellites and b) they probably wouldn't do the right job anyway.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
If they are "state of the art optics" then the resolution hasn't gone up. Instead what has gone up is the ability to a) get lots of signals in at the same time from different frequencies and b) filter them out to identify the interesting ones.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Duh, lease time on it to the CIA -I mean "Dale's Import/Export Yarn and Sewing Works LLC" of Langley, VA.
From the article: "One way to reduce the cost of the NRO-WFIRST mission for NASA's astrophysics division would be to launch it on one of the new fleet of rockets that NASA will be eager to test at the end of the decade as it moves beyond the now-grounded space shuttles. But that would involve NASA's human space programme, an option that the science-definition team has been asked to consider. It could mean moving the mission from its intended orbit around the Sun -- at a dynamically stable spot known as a Lagrangian point some 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth's orbit -- to a geostationary orbit about 36,000 kilometers above Earth (still much further out than Hubble). The geostationary option would be within reach of a wider variety of rockets -- and of potential servicing missions by astronauts."
Bad news. NASA's "new fleet of rockets" may never happen. They're not funded, and every new NASA booster program since the Shuttle has failed. Just launch the thing on a Space-X Falcon Heavy.
My first reaction to this article was 'wow NASA is getting two space telescopes', but immediately after that was realization of how ridiculous our military budget is.
Question is, how do we reduce it to a sane level without seriously harming the economy due to an influx of unskilled soldiers?
So, someone setup a crowd-tilt campaign or something to get together the money to get these things launched.
I am John Hurt.
I don't think it's the soldiers who are the big expense in the military budget.
I think it's the "military-industrial complex" which sells lots of obscenely overpriced kit to the military.
If it were possible to cut back the military budget (unlikely), you would see a few unemployed engineers (who could probably easily find civilian jobs). You'd also see a drop in profits for all of the military contractors.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Turn them back towards earth and get some super awesome pictures of topless French beachers. Duh.
Just the ones with their arms by their sides, thank you very much.