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

Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Thoughts

[jfdavis668]

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.

Re:Thoughts

[X0563511]

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.

Re:Thoughts

[SJHillman]

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.

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

[Dins]

Citizen #312374213 we've noticed a suspicious looking mole on your left upper thigh. You might want to get that checked out...

Re:Thoughts

[squiggleslash]

Even worse, NASA only got these telescopes because someone accidentally mistyped "NSA" on the PO...

Re:Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

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.

Priorities

[Comboman]

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).

Budget Problems Solved

[TheAngryMob]

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?"

Re:Budget Problems Solved

[NettiWelho]

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

[lordofthechia]

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!

Re:The choice is obvious

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:The choice is obvious

[dargaud]

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.

Re:The choice is obvious

[Convector]

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.

They are not "surplus"

[Dr La]

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.

Re:Priorities

[lennier]

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.