What Will NASA Do With Its Gifted Spy 'Scopes?

astroengine writes "NASA has begun surveying scientists on what they would like to do with two Hubble-class space telescopes donated to the civilian space agency by its secretive sibling, the National Reconnaissance Office — which operates the nation's spy satellites. But the gifts have some formidable strings attached, including costs to develop instruments and launch the observatories. The telescopes, though declassified, also are subject to export regulations. 'We need to retain possession and control,' NASA's astrophysics division director Paul Hertz told Discovery News. 'That doesn't preclude us from partnering (with other countries). It just sets boundaries on the nature of the partnership.' NASA also isn't allowed to use the telescopes for any Earth-observing missions. Topping the list of possible missions for the donor hardware is a remake of NASA's planned Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, known as WFIRST. The mission, estimated to cost between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, is intended to answer questions about dark energy, a relatively recently discovered phenomenon that is believed to be speeding up the universe's rate of expansion."

Comments

link to earlier discussion

[Trepidity]

For those who missed the original donation, here was the /. discussion of that. It seems the main update is that they've now taken a bunch of suggestions and are prioritizing them.

Re:Thoughts

[ShanghaiBill]

I don't know where I found out, but I knew soon after Hubble that the more were made for spy missions.

During the hearings over the Hubble Mirror fiasco, at least one NASA official admitted that the NRO had warned them to calibrate the mirror carefully. Apparently, the spooks had made a similar error years earlier. Unfortunately, NASA did not heed the warning.

Re:Thoughts

[router]

I think you have that wrong way round, the Hubble mirror is the size it is because Lockheed (prime) could build it cheaper if it was sized the same as satellites they were already building. See wikipedia article on kh-11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan
these were 2.4m space telescopes first launched in 1976, same prime as Hubble.

andy

Re:Thoughts

[Strider-]

That's why Hubble was useful in the first place. As a telescope, it's not that impressive - far bigger and fancier ones exist. What sets it apart is that it is above all that atmospheric interference.

Well, not quite... the adaptive optics on modern ground-based telescopes can deal with much of the problems associated with atmospherics. The real win with Hubble is that a) it can look in wavelengths that are heavily attenuated by the atmosphere (Think UV and Infrared) and b) it can stare at a target, continuously, for very long periods of time. Earth-based telescopes are (obviously) limited to observing at night, while Hubble can continuously observe a large portion of the sky on a continual basis (24 hours, 36, whatever). This is especially important when you're trying to observe extremely dim targets who's brightness can be measured in photons per minute.