NASA has received a gift from an unexpected source: the U.S. satellite spy agency. <\/p>\n
The space agency confirmed Monday that it has received a pair of giant identical telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an agency within the Department of Defense that oversees the U.S.'s constellation of spy satellites. <\/p>\n
The telescopes have mirrors similar in size to the famed Hubble Space Telescope, and the Washington Post reported that they also have a moveable secondary mirror for more focused images. <\/p>\n
NASA says the intelligence agency built them and then decided it no longer needed them, a stark contrast to NASA, which is still struggling to build and finance its own next-generation telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope. <\/p>\n
The transfer of the instruments from the NRO to NASA occurred last summer but was only recently declassified. <\/p>\n
Even with this windfall, the cash-strapped space agency, which was forced to end its 30-year-shuttle program last year and has run over budget on the Webb telescope, has no money to launch the telescopes anytime soon. <\/p>\n
NASA officials said on Monday they likely won't be in use until 2020 at the earliest, two years after the Webb telescope is scheduled to be launched. <\/p>\n
For now, the gifted telescopes are of no use to NASA as they lack the cameras and instruments necessary for astronomy research. <\/p>\n
The telescopes are currently in upstate New York. <\/p>\n
Scientists hope NASA will repurpose one of the telescopes to study mysterious dark energy. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Link: <\/p>\n
NASA gets 2 Hubble-size telescopes from spy agency<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA has received a gift from an unexpected source: the U.S. satellite spy agency. Continue reading