What Will NASA Do With Its Gifted Spy 'Scopes?

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What Will NASA Do With Its Gifted Spy 'Scopes?

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @06:25AM from the regift-them-to-spacex dept.

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."

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Thoughts by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-27 06:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

The scientific community fights for years over one Hubble telescope - and some shady agency has two?
They can afford to "give them away" now. Probably because they have something much better now?
Am I the only one who thinks there is something simply "wrong" with all this? (And yes, I find it good those things are *now*, better: *finally*, used for science)
1. Re:Thoughts by jfdavis668 · 2012-11-27 06:36 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I don't know where I found out, but I knew soon after Hubble that the more were made for spy missions. It has been known for quite a while, just doesn't seem to be general knowledge.
2. Re:Thoughts by X0563511 · 2012-11-27 06:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  These were designed to look down. Of course they have something better now. If you don't think they can't read the headlines on your newspapers from space you're mistaken.
  I don't see anything wrong with this. When you have other superpowers threatening to glass your country, seeing where they are putting those munitions and such is mandatory.
  The world is not a utopia. We need espionage, if only to try to see it coming.
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
3. Re:Thoughts by SJHillman · 2012-11-27 06:39 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  NASA has a tiny budget compared to military and intelligence, so it's no surprise that gear NASA has to fight to fund can be given away as surplus or obsolete by another agency.
  I'm just glad, and a bit surprised, the 'free' telescopes weren't scrapped or left to rust in some military warehouse.
4. Re:Thoughts by Jeng · 2012-11-27 06:52 · Score: 2
  
  They could also be spares in case of launch failures.
  
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5. Re:Thoughts by ShanghaiBill · 2012-11-27 06:56 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
6. Re:Thoughts by Dins · 2012-11-27 07:13 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Citizen #312374213 we've noticed a suspicious looking mole on your left upper thigh. You might want to get that checked out...
7. Re:Thoughts by squiggleslash · 2012-11-27 07:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Even worse, NASA only got these telescopes because someone accidentally mistyped "NSA" on the PO...
  
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8. Re:Thoughts by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-27 07:17 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Because there is a requirement to maintain a certain amount of capability (so if a spy satellite fails, they need to have a spare to launch to replace it in short order), and the long lead times (say 5 to 10 years) to build these satellites, the DoD orders a number of satellites, and some of them may possibly never actually end up being flight vehicles.
  These two satellite 'cores' are just such spares. They weren't launched because a new generation of spy satellites were put into operation before these were needed. There are probably no other examples of these things still in orbit, though the model was probably used for a decade or more.
  Remember, NASA wasn't given two completed satellites, they were given two mirror assembly's and the associated bus and structure. It is up to NASA to design and build a useful science satellite with them.
  As to the DoD having something better, they probably do, but it isn't the mirror that is better, it's that the bus and structure will be of a different design. Optically, the limitation on a downward looking spy satellite will be the atmosphere, not the mirror or other associated optical components.
9. Re:Thoughts by Metabolife · 2012-11-27 07:35 · Score: 2
  
  I know you're trying to scare me, but that actually sounds really useful.
10. Re:Thoughts by router · 2012-11-27 07:45 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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
11. Re:Thoughts by Strider- · 2012-11-27 08:00 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
  
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12. Re:Thoughts by ColdWetDog · 2012-11-27 08:04 · Score: 2
  
  Because there is a requirement to maintain a certain amount of capability (so if a spy satellite fails, they need to have a spare to launch to replace it in short order), and the long lead times (say 5 to 10 years) to build these satellites, the DoD orders a number of satellites, and some of them may possibly never actually end up being flight vehicles.
  These two satellite 'cores' are just such spares. They weren't launched because a new generation of spy satellites were put into operation before these were needed. There are probably no other examples of these things still in orbit, though the model was probably used for a decade or more.
  Remember, NASA wasn't given two completed satellites, they were given two mirror assembly's and the associated bus and structure. It is up to NASA to design and build a useful science satellite with them.
  As to the DoD having something better, they probably do, but it isn't the mirror that is better, it's that the bus and structure will be of a different design. Optically, the limitation on a downward looking spy satellite will be the atmosphere, not the mirror or other associated optical components.
  The sad part is that you are exactly correct. There must be a bunch of warehouses with all sorts of 'fun' stuff. Too bad we'll never see it.
  
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  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
13. Re:Thoughts by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-27 08:54 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  ...I think you're confusing science fiction with reality there. Unless the government has been amazing at hiding insanely advanced science and technology from the rest of us(and keep in mind, they have a hell of a time hiding a *sex scandal*), it is actually impossible to read anything through a roof from space. You can zoom in all you like(not actually true, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt here.) All you'll get is a better image of the roof.
  Sci-fi writers, myself included, can generally get away with using infrared from space to track warm bodies in a cool environment(or cool bodies in a warm environment), but even that fails through, say, glass, which isn't transparent to IR. Also, a dime, being metal, will probably be at the same temperature as its environment.
  Maybe they could use x-rays, if you've got a powerful x-ray source under the dime. Or neutrinos, if you're using dimes either thick enough to reach the satellite in orbit or that are made out of neutronium. Of course, if you've got a 400 km thick dime, reading the date on it would probably be pretty easy, if you had a really fast camera, a good eye, and didn't run into the massive dime-tower at 25,000 mph.
  It's a fair bet the government has access to technology far better than we do, but if they had access to that level of tech, they wouldn't have to resort to drone strikes on terrorists.
  They'd simply suck them through a wormhole into the sun.
  Or...I guess they could have a *really* long lens that would reach down from orbit and drill through your roof, but the kinetic energy of such a large satellite striking your roof, even partially, might cause more problems than could ever be caused by surreptitious reading of dates on your private coinage.
14. Re:Thoughts by Theory+of+Everything · 2012-11-27 10:04 · Score: 2
  
  Actually, HST has a 96 minute orbital period around the Earth, so it cannot stare continuously. But it can coadd several exposures over several orbits.
  The real advantage of HST is that it is diffraction limited even on very faint objects (adaptive optics requires bright guide stars; even laser-guide-star adaptive optics needs a relatively bright natural star for the first-order correction) and the background light is much lower.
15. Re:Thoughts by bware · 2012-11-27 10:59 · Score: 2
  
  I actually do have a suspicious looking mole on my left upper thigh, you insensitive clod!
  Now I know both my citizen number and that the tinfoil hat isn't working...
16. Re:Thoughts by Hatta · 2012-11-27 12:07 · Score: 2
  
  NASA has a tiny budget compared to military and intelligence
  That's the problem. Education and science always take a back seat to warfare. It doesn't have to be that way.
  
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  Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
link to earlier discussion by Trepidity · 2012-11-27 06:40 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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Mars relay by vinn · 2012-11-27 06:43 · Score: 2

With the Mars Odyssey dying a slow death, NASA is desperately going to need a new craft just to act as a communications relay. Outfit one of these things with the comm equipment and send it to Mars. Put some (flight-rated) commodity image processing onboard and we get a nice set up for better imaging of Mars.
Of course, there's probably a million things that would be problematic with all that, not the least of which is the thing probably isn't rated for flying that far and might need a special delivery craft to get it there. However, as far as size goes, it should have more than enough capacity on the power side and on the internal space to handle a mission that far.

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Priorities by guises · 2012-11-27 06:45 · Score: 2

I'm delighted to hear that while NASA is underfunded to the point where they've needed to cancel maintenance of the Hubble and the James Webb telescope is on the verge of being scrapped, our spy organization is so overflowing with money that they can make two Hubble equivalents which are, apparently, redundant next to all of their other money and toys.
1. Re:Priorities by lennier · 2012-11-27 09:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I'm delighted to hear that while NASA is underfunded to the point where they've needed to cancel maintenance of the Hubble and the James Webb telescope is on the verge of being scrapped, our spy organization is so overflowing with money that they can make two Hubble equivalents which are, apparently, redundant next to all of their other money and toys.
  Well, yes. Who did you think paid all the R&D bills for space in the first place?
  The Mercury capsules were launched on ICBMs, remember. And with shenanigans like GRAB going on since 1960, one could be forgiven for wondering if there have ever been any actual "pure science" missions in the US space fleet at all.
  The dual-use of "civilian" spaceflight and the primacy of military uses for space has never been a secret, most of this information is open-source and available in plenty of dry academic websites if you really want to know. But much of the US citizenry seem to enjoy believing in a gentle apolitical space fairy which exists only to take harmless pictures of nebulae and launch GPS and Internet relay satellites. It seems easier than confronting the funding reality.
  Same as the National Ignition Facility exists for "fusion power research" in the brochures. There is a lot of power generated in a boosted fission weapon, so technically it's not a lie.
  
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  You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
2. Re:Priorities by The+Master+Control+P · 2012-11-27 10:25 · Score: 2
  
  Hubble isn't the only telescope NASA runs, or even the most powerful. FERMI, SWIFT, Spitzer, Chandra, ERO, and Kepler are just the ones I can name without Google's help, there's many more.
  
  They just don't produce pretty pictures in the optical frequency range like Hubble does.
Priorities by Comboman · 2012-11-27 06:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

No one is claiming that espionage is not necessary. It's just disturbing that NASA is a constant target of budget cuts and has been struggling to keep it's single space telescope operational for the last 20 years while the military has be sitting on two, unused, surplus space telescopes (that we know about).

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Budget Problems Solved by TheAngryMob · 2012-11-27 06:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Just point them at key members' of Congress' homes for a while. Then, when budget reviews come up, NASA simply goes to Congress with a thumb drive. "We need funding for a new Mars mission, Senator. If not, we'll have to start selling some of these picture-filled drives to the public to offset the costs. Wouldn't it be a damn shame if certain images of that high school cheerleading squad coming and going from your house at all hours of the night were to...accidentally...end up on the Internet? That would be a damn, criminal, shame...wouldn't it, Senator?"

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1. Re:Budget Problems Solved by NettiWelho · 2012-11-27 07:05 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Just point them at key members' of Congress' homes for a while. Then, when budget reviews come up, NASA simply goes to Congress with a thumb drive. "We need funding for a new Mars mission, Senator. If not, we'll have to start selling some of these picture-filled drives to the public to offset the costs. Wouldn't it be a damn shame if certain images of that high school cheerleading squad coming and going from your house at all hours of the night were to...accidentally...end up on the Internet? That would be a damn, criminal, shame...wouldn't it, Senator?"
  >Coming up on 10 o'clock news: A senior NASA official died today in a strange car accident...
The choice is obvious by lordofthechia · 2012-11-27 07:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

If these can be calibrated to work as regular telescopes, then we need *Stereo* images of all the galaxies and nebulae!
It's about time NASA got on the 3D bandwagon!

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Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
1. Re:The choice is obvious by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-27 07:30 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Stereo imaging has the added benefit of allowing the removal of glare from images, besides the cool 3D effect... Glare removal is especially helpful in viewing planets as they cross their sun. I think there's some land based telescopes that have or are attempting this.
2. Re:The choice is obvious by Lumpy · 2012-11-27 07:56 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Launch and park them at the L4 and L5 points. and you would get some serious science out of them. Detecting and imaging Exoplanets as well as other things roaming the galaxy would become a lot easier with a stereo spread that wide.
  
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3. Re:The choice is obvious by ColdWetDog · 2012-11-27 07:58 · Score: 2
  
  You don't need two telescopes to do 'stereo'. You can use the fact that the telescope is moving in space.
  
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  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
4. Re:The choice is obvious by dargaud · 2012-11-27 08:12 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You don't need two telescopes to do 'stereo'. You can use the fact that the telescope is moving in space.
  Unless you want to do interferometry. I don't know if long base optical interferometry is feasible. I know that the VLT in Chile is designed to do it but that they had a hell of a time to calibrate it. I would be beyond awesome to have those two babies in opposite solar orbits doing optical interferometry. Well, I'm probably dreaming as it would mean maintaining them fixed in respect to one another to one quarter wavelength of observed light... Or somesuch.
  
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5. Re:The choice is obvious by Convector · 2012-11-27 08:52 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You're not going to get enough parallax on something as distant as a galaxy to be useful for stereo imaging. If you place these in Earth orbit, on opposite sides of the Earth, you're looking at on order 10000 km separation. The distance to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (let's call that the nearest one) is 25,000 ly, or on order 10^17 km. That gives you a parallax of 20 nano-arcseconds. Hubble's diffraction limited resolution is 50 milli-arcseconds. (Interferometry won't help here, since we're trying to compare two distinct images from individual telescopes).
  There are closer nebulae. The Orion nebula is only 1300 ly away, so we're looking at a parallax of 0.2 micro-arcseconds. Still not enough.
  If, as another poster suggested, we put them at L4 and L5 (Sun-Earth), we're talking more like a few times 10^8 km separation. So that puts us in the few milliarcsecond range for the Orion nebula. Not quite good enough for visible light, but UV could work.
6. Re:The choice is obvious by bware · 2012-11-27 11:05 · Score: 2
  
  You don't need either optical interference nor a fiber optic link to do quite sensitive interferometry.
  For an example of interferometry without optical interference, LISA would have used Time Delay Interferometry. Now cancelled, even though it rated highly in the decadal.
  TPF-I was a white light interferometer with no physical connection between the separated spacecraft.
  To name two.
7. Re:The choice is obvious by prefect42 · 2012-11-27 11:51 · Score: 2
  
  What stereo spread? What sort of angular difference do you end up with?
  
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  jh
8. Re:The choice is obvious by ceoyoyo · 2012-11-27 12:01 · Score: 2
  
  The TPF-I was an infrared interferometer that did most certainly use optical interference. Several designs were suggested but they all involved actual light from each telescope being collected and allowed to interfere at the combiner. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA484941
  LISA also involves sending light (laser light in this case, not astronomical light) along two different paths and optically combining it. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~veronica/CaJAGWR/info/general/shaddock.pdf
  Theoretically you don't require a fibre optic link (some TPF proposals didn't have one) if you can send the light through free space, but you still have to send the actual light from each telescope to a combiner. That will not work over distances like the diameter of Earth's orbit, as the OP suggested.
They are not "surplus" by Dr+La · 2012-11-27 08:06 · Score: 3, Informative

The telescopes in question are not "surplus": it consists of never finished hardware from the aborted optical component of FIA (Future Imagery Architecture). This optical FIA component, intended to replace the Keyhole system, was scrapped because of massive budget overruns. Part of the hardware was already built by that time, and that is what now has been donated to NASA. It never were complete telescopes, let alone "surplus"telescopes.

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