UPDATE: Secret Space Program Shows Its Hand

Photo: Logo of Missile and Space Intelligence Center. SOURCE Public Domain

Update to a story we presented om June 6, “U.S. Spy Satellite Agency Gives NASA 2 Space Telescopes” . . . EDITOR

from Zen Gardner

Monday, June 11th, 2012.

Who dumps technology more advanced than NASA on to NASA and thinks nothing of it? This admission of at least this segment of a secretive space program is quite revealing. It will probably slip by mainstream media, but sit up and take notice, this is a serious admission here.

NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy

(Washington Post) The secretive government agency that flies spy satellites has made a stunning gift to NASA: two exquisite telescopes as big and powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope. They’ve never left the ground and are in storage in Rochester, N.Y.

It’s an unusual technology transfer from the military-intelligence space program to the better-known civilian space agency. It could be a boost for NASA’s troubled science program, which is groaning under the budgetary weight of the James Webb Space Telescope, still at least six years from launch.

Or it could be a gift that becomes a burden. NASA isn’t sure it can afford to put even one of the two new telescopes into orbit.

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. . . . Read Complete Report

One comment

  1. The Hubble Space Telescope went into orbit with an incorrectly ground primary mirror, B’s of D’s were invested in building, storing and testing the HST prior to launch, and nobody had checked to see if the primary mirror was going to work.

    Where did the money go, spammers will tell you about what a great asset, and what a grand piece of hardware it is, it is not it is a piece of junk .. who got the HST money, as well and the trillions missing from the Pentagon revealed September 10 2001.

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