Hubble has a problem. NASA says that one of the cameras on the almost 30-year-old space telescope – the Wide Field Camera 3 – is no longer operational because of a hardware problem.
"WFC3 is the major imaging instrument on HST [Hubble Space Telescope]. It is, frankly, the best view of the heavens that humanity has," Simon Porter, an astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, wrote on Twitter. "But apparently some bloody fence is more important."
Although the Hubble Space Telescope has been observing the sky since 1990, the WFC3 was added just 10 years ago during a service mission. Over the last decade it has captured spectacular images, including a high-resolution version of the iconic 'Pillars of Creation' – a gas cloud inside the Eagle Nebula that was first imaged by Hubble back in 1995.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @12:56AM (6 children)
The spy satellites are already better than Hubble anyway. They can donate a Hubble-class telescope [wikipedia.org] like its an old lawn mower.
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(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Friday January 11 2019, @01:13AM (5 children)
I saw a video where someone said a spy satellite is like a Hubble space telescope pointing at the ground. Ooooofffffffff.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday January 11 2019, @01:29AM (1 child)
Was.
Hubble doesn't have the advanced/adaptive optics one would expect to find in a spy sat launched in the last decade.
Let me go check what's in the one on the pad at Vandenberg right now. BRB...
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Friday January 11 2019, @04:06AM
Are they doing stuff like ARGUS-IS [wikipedia.org] but in orbit?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @02:38AM (2 children)
Other than it not being optimized for that purpose (surface tracking, etc.), not having a good orbit, and almost certainly being smaller than the U.S. govt's current spy sats (operated by the NRO, Air Force...), I don't see the problem with that statement.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @02:58AM (1 child)
Just tell Trump there are "bad hombres" in space, and he'll authorize use of those spy satellites for astronomy.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @03:03AM
Considering the scale of the universe, there probably are some "bad hombres" somewhere in space (not counting Earth).
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