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It hardly bears mentioning that the orbiting Hubble Space Telescopeis one of the most extraordinarily successful scientificinstruments of all time. Since 1993, when the telescope's flawedmirror was set right by a set of custom-fit corrective lenses, theHubble has captured one spectacular image after another, ofeverything from the familiar planets of the Solar System to quasarsand galaxies at the very edge of the visible universe — andthanks to four repair missions by shuttle-riding astronauts, thetelescope has managed to survive the harsh environment of orbitalspace far longer than anyone could have imagined. All good things must come to an end, though. The shuttle is flyingno more, and within the next couple of years, the aging telescopewill gradually wink out too. It will be a terrible loss to science,and it kind of makes you wish someone had a spare Hubble secretlystashed away, just waiting to be unpacked and sent into orbit.That's what would happen in the Hollywood version, anyway. (PHOTOS: Deep-Space Photos: Hubble's Greatest Hits) That, it turns out, is what's happening in real life too. TheNational Science Foundation has just revealed the existence of notone, but two pristine, Hubble-class space telescopes, still intheir original wrappings, in a warehouse in Rochester, N.Y. Thepair was originally built for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency in charge of spy satellites, to look down at Earthrather than up into space. But the NRO has moved on to bigger andbetter instruments, and decided to hand the telescopes over. "Itjust blew me a way when I heard about this," says Princetonastrophysicist David Spergel, a member of the National Academy ofScience's Committee On Astrophysics and Astronomy. "I knew nothingabout it." The unexpected gift has sent NASA and the astronomical community,which have learned to live with smaller budgets and lowerexpectations in recent years, into a mild state of shock. It's notat all clear what they'll do with this astonishing gift — andindeed, even among the handful of scientists who have been in onthe secret, there's only a general consensus on how they might usejust one of the telescopes, never mind both. "Everyone I've talkedto," says Spergel, "has said we should follow the Decadal Survey."This is the once-every-ten-year report astronomers present to NASAwith a wish list of space missions, ranked in order of importance— establishing a sort of united front that relieves the spaceagency of having to decide on its own what science projects are themost crucial. (VIDEO: The Final Shuttle to Hubble) In the most recent Decadal Survey , issued in 2010, the astronomers asked for a new space telescopesensitive to the infrared light that comes from newborn galaxiesand newborn planets, and with a much wider field of view thanHubble's sharp but narrow eye. This proposed scope, known as WFIRST (the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope) , would also study dark energy and dark matter, but in order tosave money would be less than half Hubble's size. With the news ofthe free telescopes, however, astronomers are talking about thepossibility of building a "WFIRST-plus." The basic scope —mirrors, mountings, enclosure — that they'll be getting fromthe NRO makes up somewhere between a third and half the cost of thefinished product; the rest goes to the instruments that process andrecord cosmic light. "We can do it better, and potentially cheaper, because we don'tneed to buy the telescope," says Spergel. "What's not clear is, doyou just have the original infrared camera, or do you takeadvantage of this opportunity to add, say, a coronagraph?" Thatwould be a very big deal, since the job of a coronagraph is toblock out the blazing light of a star to let the much dimmer lightof a planet shine through. With it, says Paul Hertz, NASA'sdirector of astrophysics, the telescope could capture images ofJupiter-like planets around nearby stars and possibly Earth-likeplanets as well — an achievement astronomers thought wouldn'tbe possible until late in the 2020's. (MORE: Happy Birthday, Hubble! A Stunning New Picture for a SpecialDay) But while the free scopes are essentially there for the taking,there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. The cost of adaptingcameras and other instruments to the rest of the components, thenlaunching the whole thing and operating it for years won't beinsignificant. "A 50% discount still means you have to come up withthe other 50%," says Spergel. Still, getting the new scope intospace should at least be a lot cheaper than it was to launch theHubble. "Hubble," he says, "is really a 1960's-era telescope. It'svery heavy and fairly long. This one will be lighter and smaller."Even with drastic upgrades, Hertz thinks it's plausible it wouldcost just $1 billion to adapt and launch the proposed WFIRST —an absurdly low figure for such a powerful machine As for the second free telescope, the consensus so far, saysSpergel is that "we wait until sometime in the 2020's to decidewhat to do with it." At the moment, the James Webb Space Telescope , the Hubble's official successor, is eating up the lion's share ofNASA's science budget, and even at a discount there's no way theagency can move ahead with both of the unexpected freebies at once. All of these ideas are preliminary, however. "A few of us begandiscussing this quietly when we first learned about it," saysSpergel, "and now we'll be talking to the wider community." It willtake a while, he says, before there's a concrete plan on how tomove forward. Until that happens, astronomers will just enjoy theimprobable fact they've been given two shiny, brand-new toys toplay with — and Christmas is still half a year away. PHOTOS: The Otherworldly Work of West Virginia's Green Bank RadioTelescope PHOTOS: A Brief History of the Hubble Space Telescope. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Auto Diagnostic Scanners , China Car Diagnostic Scanner for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Auto Scanner Diagnostic.
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