Excellent news:
NASA May Launch Donated Spy Satellite Telescope to Mars.
by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior WriterDate: 15 May 2013 Time: 04:30 AM
ET
[Quote]
The NRO's gift to NASA of unused spy satellites could enable a new
project termed MOST, or Mars-Orbiting Space Telescope.
...
As it's currently envisioned, MOST would have three main science
instruments — an imaging spectral mapper, a high-resolution imager and
an ultraviolet spectrometer — allowing it to make a broad range of
detailed observations.
The mapper would have a spatial resolution of 0.7 feet (0.21 m)
per pixel at an orbiting altitude of 250 miles (400 kilometers),
McEwen said. That's about 100 times better than the resolution
achieved by a similar instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter (MRO), which has been circling the Red Planet since 2006.
...
MOST's imaging instrument would be able to photograph small areas
with a resolution of 3.1 inches (8 centimeters) per pixel — about four
times better than MRO's HiRise instrument (which McEwen leads as
principal investigator).
...
Looking beyond Mars
MOST would also be built to look up and out, beyond the Red Planet
and its two tiny moons.
The telescope's UV spectrometer is envisioned to be similar to
that of the Hubble Space Telescope. But MOST likely wouldn't be able
to study extremely distant objects as well as the famous HST, because
installing a Hubble-like guidance and navigation system that allows a
prolonged lock on such faint targets would raise the price tag
significantly, McEwen said.
Instead, MOST may be optimized to view planets and moons in the
outer solar system.
"We decided to emphasize bright targets, so mostly solar system
targets — monitoring Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune atmospheres,
monitoring volcanism on [Jupiter's moon] Io and cloud patterns on
[Saturn's moon] Titan," McEwen said. "There's an interesting variety
of things you could do in planetary science with it."
[/quote]
http://www.space.com/21064-nasa-donated-spy-telescope-mars.html
Here is the report by McEwen at the "Study on Applications of Large
Space Optics" (SALSO) workshop:
The Mars Orbiting Space Telescope (MOST).
http://salso.msfc.nasa.gov/lib/119Mcewen.pdf
The NRO scopes were reported to be lighter than Hubble, but I was
surprised how much lighter. The study by McEwen uses a mass of only
2,000 kg for the telescope and instruments. This is compared to a mass
of 11,000 kg for the Hubble. In that case it's surprising it's felt
solar electric propulsion would be needed to put it in Mars orbit, not
even to land. Quite likely a Delta IV Heavy could do it, certainly a
Falcon Heavy could.
Other proposed uses for the NRO scopes discussed at the SALSO
workshop available here:
SALSO Abstract Library.
http://salso.msfc.nasa.gov/
Bob Clark
cf.,
Newsgroups: sci.astro, sci.physics, sci.space.policy,
rec.arts.sf.science
From: Robert Clark <
rgregorycl...@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 11:14:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy - The
Washington Post.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.science/msg/e5ea3f7d6eedecb4?hl=en