posted June 04, 2012 03:40 PM               

Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy missions and can now be used to study the heavens.

They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the field of view of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies advisory panel on astronomy and astrophysics.

The surprise announcement Monday is a reminder that NASA isn’t the only space enterprise in the government — and isn’t even the best funded. NASA official Michael Moore gave some hint of what a Hubble-class space telescope might do if used for national security:

“With a Hubble here you could see a dime sitting on top of the Washington Monument.”

NASA officials stressed that they do not have a program to launch even one telescope at the moment, and that at the very earliest, under reasonable budgets, it would be 2020 before one of the two gifted telescopes could be in order. Asked whether anyone at NASA was popping champagne, the agency’s head of science, John Grunsfeld, answered, “We never pop champagne here; our budgets are too tight.”

But this is definitely a game-changer for NASA’s space science program...

posted June 05, 2012 01:20 AM               

Some excerpts:

The telescope’s short length means its camera could have the wide field of view necessary to inspect large areas of the sky for supernovae.

Even bigger advantages come, astronomers say, from the fact that the telescope’s diameter, 94 inches, is twice as big as that contemplated for Wfirst, giving it four times the light-gathering power, from which a whole host of savings cascade.

Instead of requiring an expensive launch to a solar orbit, the telescope can operate in geosynchronous Earth orbit, complete its survey of the sky four times faster, and download data to the Earth faster.

Equipped with a coronagraph, which blocks light from the sun’s disk to look for exoplanets, another of Wfirst’s goals, the former spy telescope could see planets down to the size of Jupiter around other stars.

If it sounds almost too good to be true, it might be, cautioned Adam Riess, one of the three dark energy Nobelists, who noted that a thorough estimate of the new mission’s costs had not been done yet.

But still, he said, “When someone hands you a hand-me-down like that, you have to be excited,” Dr Riess said. “They’re not sitting around at Walmart.”

posted June 05, 2012 05:48 AM               

In the meantime, the agency has to work within some limits imposed by the telescopes' history. It won't be able, for example, to release any pictures until after the lenses are covered by all that additional hardware. USA Today's Dan Vergano was given an image of the telescope that was used at a recent meeting of the National Research Council. The level of redaction indicates that there will be some significant limits on any NASA design teams.

There are a couple of things that really need to be emphasized: NASA did not get a complete system and still has a lot of work to do. It could save them money, but those savings will mostly go toward taking a project in development and making it more likely to fly in an era when NASA is strapped for funds. And despite the similarities in mirror sizes, this is not a replacement for when Hubble inevitably starts to fail, since the hardware is quite different. But that's not a bad thing, given that it will answer questions we can't currently address.

As for the fact that NASA was given two pieces of hardware? Michael Moore of the Astrophysics group said, "We don't anticipate ever being rich enough to use both of them, but it sure is fun to think about, isn't it?"

posted June 06, 2012 01:04 AM               

A Delta IV Heavy could likely loft one of these, but if they are talking about sticking one in Geosynch orbit, it is going to take a pretty massive trans stage to get it up that high. The KH-11s to my knowledge were placed in LEO orbits since they were intended to look down at targets on the Earth and pass over large swatches of terrain.

posted June 06, 2012 08:35 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
A Delta IV Heavy could likely loft one of these, but if they are talking about sticking one in Geosynch orbit, it is going to take a pretty massive trans stage to get it up that high.

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posted June 06, 2012 08:38 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Jay Chladek:
Plus, Hubble is designed to focus on some very distant targets and take some rather long exposures compared to a recon satellite designed to shoot on the fly over a fast moving target on the ground (due to the speed of the orbit).

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