NASA stripped the guts out of old spy satellites to build the innovative Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, but how? And why? Years of hard work and anticipation are culminating as we near NASA’s launch of its next-generation space telescope. The Roman Space Telescope, which will lift off next Sunday (August 30) aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, will propel astronomy into the future, exploring the mysteries of dark energy, studying distant worlds and expanding our understanding of the universe around us. But to get to this point, NASA used some… unexpected technology. In the center of the observatory is the Optical Telescope Array. This houses the telescope’s primary mirror, its main mechanism through which it observes the cosmos, nine additional mirrors, support structures and various types of electronic components. But where did all this technology come from? The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which makes spy equipment for US agencies such as the CIA. That’s where. In 1999, the NRO launched the multibillion-dollar “Future Imaging Architecture” program, which contracted new spy satellites. The NRO contracted Boeing for the project, and the company designed a complete suite of new radar and optical imaging reconnaissance satellites. They are basically spy satellites. In 2001, in post-9/11 America, this effort continued to increase with national security concerns at an all-time high. However, this wave of spy satellite development was short-lived. And with billions of dollars in cost overruns by Boeing, the project closed in 2005. At the time, the New York Times called the program “perhaps the most spectacular and costly failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects.” You may like it But one program’s spectacular failure is another’s treasure trove of free space technology. Years later, in 2012, the NRO donated two unused space telescopes from this program to NASA. With optics said to be similar to that of the Hubble Space Telescope, two free telescopes presented the agency with a tantalizing opportunity. This donation came just a couple of years after Roman (then known as WFIRST) was originally proposed, and although it would cost money to rework the hardware and build the rest of the space telescope, this provided the possibility of a significant cost reduction for the mission. After considering the possibility, the team decided it was the right decision. And in 2011, years before Roman (WFIRST) was formally designated as a mission by NASA, the agency announced that they would repurpose this spy satellite technology. This decision was made following the 2010 National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics, which listed Roman as its top priority. While this donated part of the spy satellite came with top-notch optics, it was also free. The most recently launched space telescope was the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which lifted off in 2018 but had been in development since the mid-1990s. The JWST attracted significant public attention and scrutiny for being long behind schedule and way over budget, ultimately costing a whopping $10 billion. Scientists working on the Roman Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA/Sophia Roberts) While JWST was grappling with these budget issues, Roman was already in development. So it’s no surprise that when a high-tech space telescope landed on its doorstep, NASA took full advantage of the opportunity, although the Roman team would still have to replace the electronics in the telescopes that the NRO retired. So in the end, did the NRO telescopes really save NASA money? It is not clear. Each donated telescope was said to be worth at least $250 million, but experts at the time of development were divided in their estimates as to whether reusing this old hardware would actually save or reduce costs in the end. Some quirks also came with the free hardware. In addition to having to replace electronics and rework a telescope that someone else built, the Roman team had to learn about the telescope with some restrictions. When details about the telescopes were given to the mission team, large chunks of information were completely blacked out, the Washington Post reported at the time. But although the Roman team was given something quite strange to work with, the mission stayed on schedule and on budget as we’ve seen with a space telescope of this magnitude. NASA still has the NRO’s second telescope, although the agency has not said what it might do with the equipment. As strange and unexpected as this series of events was, it resulted in a complete space telescope that now sits at the launch site, ready to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Join us this coming Sunday (August 30) to watch a telescope made with spy satellite technology travel beyond our planet.
