The Hubble Space Telescope. The new scopes are shorter, designed for peering down.
NASA announced some exciting news yesterday
: apparently, the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that looks after the US's spy satellites, had a couple of Hubble-scale space telescopes lying around. In a warehouse in upstate New York. In bits and pieces, lacking the requisite solar panels and cameras to make them fully functional, but basically complete, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Why did the NRO have two unused space telescopes, when NASA is barely able to scrape two pennies together? Neither side will answer that question, citing classified information. Go ahead, use your imagination. But an enterprising NRO official gave NASA a ring, and a little bureaucratic paper-pushing later, hey presto! NASA has two more space telescopes it had a few months ago. Right now, Chandra, Spitzer, and Hubble are in orbit, and the James ...
