Are NASA's New Telescopes NRO Future Imagery Architecture Leftovers?
Spy agency gives NASA two spare Hubbles, Washington Post
“I’m told by a government engineer with knowledge of the new instruments that they’re “a successful part of an otherwise failed program on the NRO side.”
NASA has a mission for grounded spy telescopes, SpaceflightNow
“But the 94-inch aperture on the NRO optical system will permit Hubble-class resolution over a wide field-of-view – imaging a swath of the sky 100 times larger than Hubble can see in a single exposure.”
U.S. Launches Costly Overhaul of Spy Satellites, LA Times (1995)
“It’s like looking at the world through a soda straw,” said one defense industry consultant of the existing spy satellites. The 8X program would redress that shortcoming by covering roughly 800 to 1,000 square miles in each photograph, with roughly the same resolution as the existing satellites…”
In Death of Spy Satellite Program, Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids, NY Times (2007)
“The panel reported that the project, called Future Imagery Architecture, was far behind schedule and would most likely cost $2 billion to $3 billion more than planned, according to records from the satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office. … It took two more years, several more review panels and billions more dollars before the government finally killed the project — perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects. The story behind that failure has remained largely hidden, like much of the workings of the nation’s intelligence establishment. … The team also wanted an optical system that could take wide-angle images, showing large areas on the ground, as well as tightly focused, detailed pictures of small objects. The goal, to use an oversimplified analogy, was a revolutionary zoom lens. “
8 June Update
Donated Space Telescopes are Remnants of Failed NRO Program, Space News
“Among Boeing’s subcontractors on the canceled program was a division of Eastman Kodak of Rochester, which for years had built the mirror assemblies for the nation’s spy satellites. That division was sold to ITT Exelis in 2004. In an email, ITT Exelis spokeswoman Irene Lockwood confirmed that her company built the hardware. “Since developing and building the two partial telescope assemblies in the late 1990s-early 2000s, ITT Exelis has stored the hardware in one of our Rochester facilities. As the future space missions for the telescopes evolve, ITT Exelis will work with NASA to determine how best they can be used.”
This whole sordid mess might provide a good opportunity to see how and if there are sources of research money other than NASA for launching and operating these very positive prospects. NASA can no directly provide the launch capability and can no longer provide the orbital maintenance capability as they did with Hubble. Maybe the Hubble Telescope Institute can take on the orbital operations and USAF can provide a spare launch system. Maybe DOD can provide some of their excess funds and one or two excess launch vehicles?
This is all funny after we did our work for DARPA in 2005 showing a huge field of view telescope for persistent surveillance. The NRO slapped Tony Tether’s hand and told him to stay out of the telescope business…
FIA was an incredible cluster and at least now maybe something can come of it.
The quote from Jon Morse in the WaPo article is pure hilarity. The only thing he “worked his tail off” for was to hide JWST cost overruns from the Astrophysics community, particularly from the Astro2010 decadal survey where priorities for space missions were set. There have been concerted efforts over the last 10 YEARS to a fly a dirt cheap (~700M) JDEM / WFIRST mission, all of which have been delayed or scuttled for more expensive NASA Goddard-led designs, even as such a mission has been given high priority from the community. NASA is so adverse to being responsible for the mission that they opted to contribute money / instrumentation to the European EUCLID mission EVEN THOUGH they supposedly new about the availability of these NRO satellites. This is all shameless butt-covering for what any reasonable person would see as a positive way forward at a reasonable cost.
One of the things that drove the cost through the roof on JWST was the requirement to auto deploy the mirrors and to make sure that when they folded out that the figure of merit (accuracy of the alignment) of the mirrors was maintained. This was in turn driven by the requirement that the telescope be deployed out at L2, far away from humans. They astronomical community simply did not want another Hubble, and this is the result. Few people remember now that the current size of JWST is smaller than the original 8 meter mirror.
We were working with Langley in 2005 with DARPA for a 14 meter primary mirror with a lambda/10 figure of merit at 550 nanometers. That is larger than the Terrestrial Planet Finder but would have had to be assembled at the station and then moved under its own power to a higher orbit. It would not require the cooling of the JWST either and would have revolutionized astronomical science.
NASA management at the time was not interested and DARPA tried to take it forward but was opposed by guess who….
The system is broken, and this new debacle is yet another symptom of the disease.
It’s my understanding that manufacturing of the beryllium mirrors was also driving the cost. As I understand it, a lot of the know-how for the figuring of said mirrors was accumulated in the process of manufacture.
Those mirrors have been built and polished for quite a while now. I do agree that those large mirror surfaces made from beryllium could not have been cheap.
…but would have had to be assembled at the station and then moved under its own power to a higher orbit.
And this would have been lower risk and cheaper than JWST?
It would not require the cooling of the JWST either…
So it wasn’t an IR observatory?
SpaceflightNow says that the gear is about a decade old and that it wouldn’t be launched for another decade. This very uninformed observer wonders: are we in the position of a Havana taxi driver fixing his ’52 Chevrolet? Isn’t it the case that in the 20 years telescope tech has/will improve dramatically?
I still say that this would make an awesome stopgap for the JWST. Take some funding out of the JWST budget to finish and launch these, then allow JWST to fall back a few more years. It wouldn’t be needed as critically anyway as a replacement for Hubble with these telescopes in place.
These two telescopes are apparently identical. Presumably they could be instrumented identically, and flown as an interferometry capable instrument. The separation between the instruments could be changed potentially, too, if some observations could benefit from a large separation, say opposite sites of the solar system.
Please urge Congress to fund NASA to use the NRO telescopes.. both of them!
http://www.change.org/petit…