Department of Defense gifted two better-than-Hubble telescopes to NASA

The U.S. government's secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope. 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.

www.theatlantic.com...
Yep if the DOD didn't need these two birds, which are both better than any civilian telescope, what do they have?

They have satellites, MORE powerful than Hubble, pointing at our Earth?!?!?
Hubble can see galaxies some 13 billion light-years away.... Imagine the high-res snaps they've got of society

Like you said OP, what in the hell do THEY have if they don't need those anymore?.....

Wow! Can't you just be happy their putting them to good use?

reply to post by Apleness


Don't worry, the Obama administration will be leaking all the classified details in due course. Curiously, the space drone's mission was extended just recently, was it not?

I would read this first.
www.washingtonpost.com...

Sounds like they are incomplete and are not even in space yet. I guess they are basically camera lenses with no camera. They do appear to be much more advanced than the Hubble at 100x the field of view. Unfortunately it sounds like NASA doesn't have the budget to get the telescopes operational. Maybe in the future hopefully.

Or..... Maybe NASA is scrambling to get some eyes in the sky looking outward towards the stars. But why? To track something? The NRO has always been a very closed off secretive department, and it must be serious for them to "gift" some seriously expensive technology to NASA. The NRO could have potentially sold it to the ESA or some other friendly space agency for some serious coin. After all US intelligence agencies are not known for their charitable donations.

Then again it's well known that the USAF space budget far eclipses NASA's budget as a whole. If they really needed to get it into space they could of just tapped them. The NRO not needing those two telescopes must mean that satellite technology is beginning to go by the wayside. Drones are the new hot ticket, longer loiter times over target, unmanned, cheaper, and even stealth. No more short/predictable target times from satellites.

Talk amongst yourselves.....

Originally posted by Apleness
Yep if the DOD didn't need these two birds, which are both better than any civilian telescope, what do they have?

They have all the funding and legislation for ALL types of spying.
So with an endless checkbook, the question is...What DON'T they have?


Plus:
Who needs telescopes for spying when you got facebook?

reply to post by BaitingThePublic

Galaxies are very large.

Since the primary mirrors of these telescopes are the same size as that of the Hubble, they have the same resolution. The Hubble, if it were directed at Earth, would have a resolution of about 30cm. Put it in a lower orbit and you could get maybe 15cm. That's pretty good but you aren't going to be reading license plates with it, especially with all that atmosphere messing things up.

The reason the article calls the telescopes "more powerful" is because they have a sort of "zoom" function. But they don't get higher resolution.

Babbage

for the OOOOLD guys


kwassl.net...

The NRO not needing those two telescopes must mean that satellite technology is beginning to go by the wayside.

I don't know about that, but I'm sure that the NRO not needing those two telescopes means that ungodly billions of $$$ were fed into porcine mouths of unimaginably corrupt contractors and their congressional "friends". When a agency scraps working, billion+++ spacecraft it isn't because of a sudden outbreak of frugality, but an obscene surfeit of plenty so much that they can't even bother with the management of the lesser capabilites.

For instance a good question to ask is, who the **** ordered them built?.

Either that, or they were obscenely late and obsolete.

I do think that they probably have both stealth satellites (Misty and successors) and stealth aerial drones to replace the capability (open satellites are too predictable for enemies), and maybe an expensive SR-71 replacement which now gets rarely used. (you still hear of unexplained sonic booms sometimes).

reply to post by Phage


I didn't know that about those telescopes, thanks for the info

"Zoom" function would be pretty awesome. I just wanna see some intense cosmos and all those bright & shiny space-stuffs.

Why not just use facebook to spy on us.