NRO Gives NASA Two Military Spy Telescopes For Astronomy

The Washington Post reports NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy.

"The telescopes were built by private contractors for the National Reconnaissance Office, one of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. The telescopes have 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirrors, just like the Hubble, but they have 100 times the field of view. Their structure is shorter and squatter.

They’re ‘space qualified,’ as NASA puts it, but they’re a long way from being functioning space telescopes. They have no instruments — there are no cameras, for example. More than that, they lack a funded mission and all that entails, such as a scientific program, support staff, data analysis and office space. They will remain in storage while NASA mulls its options."

"The announcement Monday raised the obvious question of why the intelligence agency would no longer want, or need, two Hubble-class telescopes. A spokeswoman, Loretta DeSio, provided information sparingly. “They no longer possessed intelligence-collection uses,” she said of the telescopes. She confirmed that the hardware represents an upgrade of Hubble’s optical technology. “The hardware is approximately the same size as the Hubble but uses newer, much lighter mirror and structure technology,” DeSio said. She added, “Some components were removed before the transfer.”"

"DeSio, the NRO spokeswoman, said the telescopes were built in the late 1990s and early 2000s."

"These are formidable eyes in the sky, apparently. NASA official Michael Moore said that if the Hubble Space Telescope were pointed at the surface of the Earth instead of at outer space, “you could see a dime sitting on top of the Washington Monument.” 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 and a co-chair of the National Academies of Science committee on astronomy and astrophysics. 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,” he said."

So many mixed feeling about this. I wonder what capabilities NRO has that it can give these away and what those capabilities would mean for civilian science?