How Old Spy Satellites Became NASA's Roman Space Telescope

NASA's next-generation Roman Space Telescope launches this Sunday, Aug. 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. It will study dark energy — the mysterious force behind the universe's accelerating expansion — and distant planets. At its core is the Optical Telescope Assembly, holding the primary mirror, nine more mirrors, support structures and electronics — hardware from a scrapped U.S. spy satellite program.

The parts came from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds spy satellites for U.S. agencies. In 1999, the NRO launched a multibillion-dollar program, Future Imagery Architecture, and contracted Boeing to design the hardware. The effort intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, but cost overruns forced its closure in 2005. The New York Times called it "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects."

In 2012, the NRO donated two unused telescopes from the scrapped program to NASA, with optics said to resemble the Hubble Space Telescope's. The donation came about two years after Roman, then called WFIRST, was first proposed. NASA said in 2011 — before Roman was formally designated a mission — it would reuse the hardware, following a 2010 decadal survey that ranked Roman its top priority.

The free hardware came with conditions: the Roman team had to replace electronics the NRO had removed, and information about the telescopes had large sections blacked out, the Washington Post reported. Each telescope was said to be worth at least $250 million, though experts disagreed on whether reuse actually saved money. By comparison, the James Webb Space Telescope, built since the mid-1990s and launched in 2018, cost $10 billion after running over budget.

Despite its unusual origins, Roman has stayed roughly on schedule and on budget. NASA still holds the second donated telescope and has not said what it plans to do with it. The finished observatory now sits at its launch site, ready to lift off this Sunday.