Hubble space telescopeNASA has received two spy telescopes from US space intelligence agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which are claimed to be more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Designed for surveillance activities for the NRO, the telescopes were no longer required for spy missions and are expected to provide NASA the equipment necessary to complete its delayed space astronomy missions, mainly the budget troubled WFIRST mission.

NASA has evaluated the suitability of the optical telescopes for its WFIRST mission and has concluded that they meet the requirements and would provide more enhanced images than initial telescopes to be equipped in the Hubble observatory.

With 2.4m mirrors, the two declassified space telescopes have 100 times the field of view and their hardware has been used on high-resolution optical spy platforms for gathering digital images for the intelligence agency.

David Spergel, Princeton University astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies of Science committee on astronomy and astrophysics, told the Washington Post that a manoeuvrable secondary mirror of the telescopes allows it to capture more focused images while offering a broader view of the sky at higher resolutions than NASA’s Hubble observatory.

The received telescopes, expected to be the versions of the agency’s KH-11 Kennan satellites that have been launched into orbit since 1976, are also expected to allow NASA to revive its plan to launch a new telescope to probe dark energy, which is accelerating the expansion of the universe.

The satellites are currently stored at ITT Exelis’s facility in Rochester, New York, but NASA is expected to launch one of them with the assistance of private space companies by 2020.

Image: Hubble undergoing its first servicing mission in December 1993. Photo: courtesy of NASA.