It hardly bears mentioning that the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most extraordinarily successful scientific instruments of all time. All good things come to an end, however, and the Hubble is nearing the final years of its useful life. But hold the funeral dirges: In June, the National Science Foundation revealed the existence of not one but two pristine, Hubble-class space telescopes still in their original wrappings in a warehouse in Rochester, N.Y. The pair were originally built for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency in charge of spy satellites, to look down at Earth rather than up into space. But the NRO has moved on to bigger and better instruments, and decided to hand the telescopes over. It’s not clear what NASA will do with this astonishing gift—how they’ll upgrade the telescopes or when they’ll launch them. For now, they’re still trying to wrap their brains around the fact that they own the things at all. “It just blew me away when I heard about this,” said Princeton astrophysicist David Spergel, when the gift was announced. “I knew nothing about it.”
Science & Space
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9. NASA Gets Two New Hubbles–For Free
Full List
Top 10 Green Stories
- 10. Superstorm Sandy Brings Climate Change Home
- 9. Offshore Oil Drilling Begins in the Arctic
- 8. Climate Change Goes Missing in the 2012 Election
- 7. 2012 on Track to Be the Warmest Year on Record
- 6. Arctic Sea Ice Melts to Record Low Levels
- 5. The Battle Over Keystone XL
- 4. The U.S. Oil Boom
- 3. California Puts a Cap on Carbon
- 2. The Battle to Label GM Foods
- 1. The Great Midwest Drought
Top 10 New Species
- 10. Prehistoric Crocodile
- 9. The Galapagos Deep-Sea Cat Shark
- 8. The Auburn Tiger Trapdoor Spider
- 7. Ancient Rodents in Chilean Grasslands
- 6. Peruvian Porcupine
- 5. Peruvian Small-Eared Shrew
- 4. The Congolese Cercopithecus Lomamiensis Monkey
- 3. Parrot-Headed, Big-Fanged Porcupine Dinosaur
- 2. Big-Fanged Jumping Spider
- 1. Peruvian Night Monkey
Top 10 Space Moments
- 10. The Moon Implicated in the Sinking of the Titanic
- 9. NASA Gets Two New Hubbles–For Free
- 8. Nanoparticles in the Moon’s Soil
- 7. North Korea’s Satellite Flop
- 6. Geysers on Mars
- 5. Ocean on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus
- 4. Discovery of Earthlike Planet Around Alpha Centauri
- 3. Dawn Spacecraft Geads Off to Ceres
- 2. Dragon Spacecraft Docks with International Space Station
- 1. Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars