NASA Mulls Missions for Donated Spy Satellite Telescopes

[jakeXT]

NASA is sorting through a variety of possible uses for a pair of powerful spy satellite telescopes that fell into the agency's lap last year.

...

The ideas presented at the SALSO workshop fall into seven broad categories, meeting organizers and a technical review team determined:
..
Mars-orbiting space telescope
Exoplanet observatory
General-purpose faint object explorer
Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope
Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)
Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)
Resarch of Earth's upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)




http://www.space.com/20955-nasa-spy-satellite-telescopes-missions.html

[Victor_c3]

1. Exciting ideas

I personally like the idea of the Mars-orbiting space telescope, but then again I'm a sucker for any and all of the Mars missions. That planet fascinates me.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. That's great.

I love the idea of re-purposing something like that for scientific use.

[hunter]

3. Aim it at the martian surface and crowdsource the output.

This could even be an interesting thing to do with the moon.

Maybe we could find some prehistoric alien artifacts, a secret Nazi moonbase, a dinosaur's pod-grown organic spaceship, or a colony of telepathic lunar nudists...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_on_the_Moon