How the NRO Saved NASA's Astrophysics Program Continued

When astronomer Alan Dressler was invited to see what might be the future of NASA’s astrophysics programme, he had to leave his mobile phone behind, lest he be tempted to grab a quick snapshot. As he and a dozen others passed through the ITT Exelis facility in Rochester, New York, a guide held up a flashing red light, to warn working Exelis engineers to seal their lips in front of people without security clearance.

Their destination was the cavernous clean area of Building 1230, where two 2.4-metre telescopes, each as big as the Hubble Space Telescope and never flown, rested on low pedestals. “It seemed almost too good be true,” says Dressler, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. “Things like this just don’t drop on your doorstep.”

The unexpected gift comes from the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a secretive surveillance agency that built the telescopes to peer down on Earth. In June, NASA revealed that the NRO had bequeathed the scopes to the space agency because they were no longer needed. Now NASA has to figure out what it will do with them — and whether it can afford the cost of kitting them out with instruments and sending them into orbit.

This month, NASA plans to announce a science-definition team that will embark on that assessment. The team will report by April 2013 to NASA administrator Charles Bolden on the pros, cons and costs of adapting one of the telescopes for a mission to investigate dark energy, the phenomenon thought to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. But astronomers are already encouraged. As the veil of secrecy surrounding the telescopes lifts, astronomers are beginning to size up the devices’ capabilities. And so far, they are liking what they see — so much so that they are now talking about tacking on an instrument that would detect extrasolar planets directly. “I think the enthusiasm has only increased as time has gone on,” says Dressler.

I talked about this before here here. I am still curious which spysat model this is.  I find it amusing and interesting that part of the deal is that NASA cannot point it back at Earth.