NRO Gifts NASA Two Leftover Space Telescopes, Euclid to Cost NASA $40-50 Million, GEMS Not Confirmed

NASA revealed today that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) gave it two leftover space telescopes. NASA is looking at using one of them and must determine how much it would cost to build, launch and operate a spacecraft that would incorporate it. NASA also must decide what other instruments may be needed to achieve the scientific objectives in the most recent National Research Council (NRC) decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics.
NASA astrophysics division director Paul Hertz told a meeting of the NRC's Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAA) about the gift this morning. His short talk was followed by a more lengthy explanation by Dr. Alan Dressler of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution. Dressler chaired the panel of the NRC's 2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey, New Worlds, New Horizons (NWNH), that recommended a mission called the Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) as the top priority for a large space mission for the next decade of space-based astrophysics research.
WFIRST is a multi-purpose telescope that would study dark energy, search for exoplanets, and survey the universe in the infrared wavelengths. Budget constraints exacerbated by significant overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have pushed WFIRST well ...