space telescopes

NASA: geeks bearing gifts

catdynamics | June 4, 2012

In which NASA gets presented with two Hubble class wide field space telescopes... Oh my. So some of the mysterious maneuverings at NASA's Astrophysics division can now be better understood. The National Reconnaissance Office was sitting on a couple of spare space telescopes they are willing to transfer to NASA. These are presumably late block Keyhole reconnaissance satellite spares, maybe even the two extras orders a few years ago at the end of the program. So, state of the art as of 10-20 years ago. We are looking at two partial telescopes, with a Hubble size primary mirror, 2.4m, but…