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Hubble was launched in 1990, is it surprising that 22 years later, NRO telescopes are substantially better ?
by palunon 10y ago
Hubble was launched in 1990, is it surprising that 22 years later, NRO telescopes are substantially better ?
- Jtsummers 10y agoThe satellites would've been near contemporaries of Hubble, not 22 years junior. NRO didn't need them anymore.
- dasmoth 10y agoThe donated telescopes were build for the Future Imagery Architecture project: http://www.space.com/16077-nasa-space-telescopes-failed-nro-program.html They're substantially newer technology than Hubble (which is older than the 1990 launch date suggests -- it was delayed several years after the Challenger disaster). That said, I don't think they'll give an appreciably better resolution -- given good fabrication techniques, optically a 2.4m mirror is a 2.4m mirror, and everything I've read suggests that US IMINT satellites have been (in good seeing conditions) close to diffraction-limited for a long time now. I'm sure the capabilities of the satellites have improved a great deal, but in other directions than resolution. More communications bandwidth? Faster repointing (giving more flexibility about which targets get imaged on a given pass? Better multi-spectral imaging? I'm sure there will be some surprises when the program is eventually declassified. (And I'm optimistic it will be -- there's lots you can read now about the film-return satellites).
- njharman 9y agoThe point is they were giving them away. Meaning the sats they kept are even better than better than bubble.