NASA Ponders What To Do With a Pair of Free Space Telescopes 97
scibri writes "A few months ago, the secretive National Reconnaissance Office gave NASA two Hubble-sized space telescopes that it didn't want anymore. Now the space agency has to figure out what to do with them, and whether it can afford it. The leading candidate to use one of the telescopes is the the proposed Wide-Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST), which would search for the imprint of dark energy, find exoplanets and study star-forming regions of the Galaxy. The NRO telescope could speed up the mission, but may end up costing more in the long run."
A few issues with re-purposing the NRO satellite: higher launch costs because it's bigger, it can't see as far or as much IR (but it can see fainter objects, and could be used in planet detection), and the need for a bigger camera.
Re:send them.. (Score:5, Informative)
Let alone the strength of a transmitter that would be necessary to facilitate data transmissions of the imagery collected from such a location?
Or the ability to operate when sufficiently removed from a star to facilitate energy collection?
Not to say that it wouldn't be a particularly cool idea, but wildly impractical with our current state of technology.
Re:Interesting choice of priorities (Score:5, Informative)