· by brianvastag.mas.to.ap.brid.gy ·3h ago · view on bsky.app ↗

Original post on mas.to (mas.to)

For those interested in the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope launching soon: The bones of the spacecraft were donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2012, a surprise to pretty much everyone in the world of science. It's taken 14 years to outfit it as an infrared space […]

#astronomy #roman #science

0 comments — live from bluesky

Brian Vastag · 0 · 3h ago

'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. They’re […]

Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified: · 0 · 3h ago

@brianvastag Years ago, published some analysis of what you got by pointing a Hubble-scale device at the ground, and it was mind-blowing. The obvious conclusion is the new ones are so much better that it was better to surplus the two they gave NASA than to bother launching them.

Brian Vastag · 0 · 3h ago

@adamshostack Yeah they were built in the late 1990s...never launched for NRO for who knows why, spy cameras/instruments were removed before the hand-over. Obviously built for looking down with a secondary focusable mirror. But if NRO had better stuff by 2012, they could do better than seeing a […]

Brian Vastag · 0 · 3h ago

Anyway, I remember the day this came into the newsroom....Joel was like, Hey there are two Hubble-class telescopes sitting in upstate New York no one knew about...and we have the scoop.