Was Hubble really related to spy satellites?

Question

Around the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, I remember comments in the media that the Hubble may be related to certain espionage satellites. The Hubble was designed and built around the time that the KH-9 series was operated by the NRO. In 2012, a KH-9 was shown to the public for the first time.

This shows the KH-9 to be rather different from the Hubble. The optical path is different (the KH-9 looks through an opening in its side, Hubble looks through its top), the camera technology is not even remotely related (film versus digital).
Now that we know a bit more about Hubble's contemporaries, can a definitive answer be given as to the relationship between the two programs?

Answer 1

It was, in the sense that all spacecraft have relationship to each other. Okay, beyond that, let's see how they are related. Wikipedia talks about the design of Hubble:

Once the Space Telescope project had been given the go-ahead, work on the program was divided among many institutions. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was given responsibility for the design, development, and construction of the telescope, while Goddard Space Flight Center was given overall control of the scientific instruments and ground-control center for the mission. MSFC commissioned the optics company Perkin-Elmer to design and build the Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA) and Fine Guidance Sensors for the space telescope. Lockheed was commissioned to construct and integrate the spacecraft in which the telescope would be housed.

Okay, so let's take that apart. Marshall Space Flight Center designed it, Goddard build the instruments. Both of those are branches of NASA. So, who builds the spy satellites? Well, that's a bit tricky, but Wikipedia again takes a stab, and based on the fact that Hubble was designed so long ago, this should be fairly accurate. We're interested in the IMINT missions, Image Intelligence, and more specifically Electra-optical. Of these, the most similar is the Misty satellites, which, like Hubble, were launched from a Space Shuttle. The Misty satellites are believed to be built by Lockheed Martin, which would indicate a different design path entirely.

Okay, so the primary systems don't seem to bear a resemblance, but, as has been mentioned in comments, the optics were built by Perkin Elmer, for both Spy Satellites and Hubble. So, let's look at that a bit. If they were exactly the same design, then spy satellites would have suffered from the same problem that Hubble did, a blurring of the images that shouldn't be there. But I have little doubt that the basic technology is the same, and there's even a good chance that the same machinery was used to make the mirror that is made for spy satellites. They probably use similar materials as well, and similar processes.

My feeling is that there are definitely some commonalities, especially in the optics, but they are fundamentally different. Hubble will have to be more sensitive than a spy satellite, because the nebulas it is designed to see are too dim to see otherwise, while Earth is kind of bright. They probably have similar optics, but Hubble will be forced at infinity focus, while a spy satellite might adjust slightly. Both have similar pointing requirements, and wavelength requirements. The biggest difference, however, is the way sensors are designed. Hubble uses a framing camera, not much different that a camera you own. Most spy satellites use broom cameras, which are more like a fax machine, the Earth moves beneath them.

Last point of interest is that the question of if Hubble can image Earth has been asked, and the answer states that it can't, because the exposure would blur the image beyond recognition.

If you were going to compare a spacecraft imager to a spy satellite, I would take a look at MRO's HiRISE Camera. The design is quite similar to what I would expect from a spy satellite, although the optics would probably be a bit bigger. But Hubble doesn't really have all that much in common with a spy satellite, although they probably share similar technology.

Answer 2

This answer addresses the headline question, rather than the detailed content that suggests a connection between HST and a KH9.

There may be a connection between the Hubble and a KH11. Refer here and here. These links identify the prime contractor as Lockheed in both cases and also suggest a rough gemoetric similarity based on an anecdote about the shipping container having been used, with some difference such as the mirror size. This link shows a ground photo though little can be discerned from it, even the scale, other than the outline geometrical shape.

HST is an electro-optical system, where as the KH9 used photographic film returned in a series of re-entry vehicles.

Also this article suggests a few differences rather than similarities and asserts that two KH11 based imagers were offered to NASA by the NRO - though this point seems to be directly refuted in the Wiki KH11 article, which states that the hardware was related to a different NRO program and even goes a little way to describing the optical path.

Its interesting, certainly, though I would be rather circumspect about all of this information unless you are prepared to spend a while auditing each paper/web trail and, being realistic, it wouldn't surprise me if you find nothing you can be sure of.

So, apologies for being vague but I think that comes with the territory. I don't expect you are going to get much in the way of hard facts until sometime in the distant future when and if some declassification occurs.

Answer 3

Reading Wikipedia's KH-11 Kennen I found this ...

"KH-11s are believed to resemble the Hubble Space Telescope in size and shape, as the satellites were shipped in similar containers. Their length is believed to be 19.5 meters, with a diameter of up to 3 meters.^5,22 A NASA history of the Hubble,²³ in discussing the reasons for switching from a 3-meter main mirror to a 2.4-meter design, states: "In addition, changing to a 2.4-meter mirror would lessen fabrication costs by using manufacturing technologies developed for military spy satellites."

⁵Richelson, Jeffrey T. (2001). The Wizards of Langley. Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. Westview Press, Boulder. ISBN 0-8133-4059-4.p.199-200

²²Mark Wade (9 August 2003). "KH-11". Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived from the original on 20 June 2012. Retrieved 23 April 2004.

²³The Power to Explore, NASA. In particular, Chapter XII – The Hubble Space Telescope Chapter 12, p. 483

(see the article itself for links to the sources.)

So it seems fairly definitive that there was certainly some relationship.

Answer 4

The NASASpaceflight forum has a long discussion of the KH-11 KENNEN satellites, drawing on recently-declassified primary sources.

The question was asked as far back as 1985, in Sky&Telescope magazine.

George A. Keyworth, science advisor to President Reagan, responded in general terms: "There is no question that it would have been a very much more difficult task [to build the HST] if we had not already acquired considerable expertise in both talent and industrial manufacturing. The HST is new, but it draws upon technologies used in military systems"

The main mirror for Hubble was made by Perkin-Elmer.

Way back in the mid-1980s or so I remember reading an article that ran in a scientific publication. May have been Scientific American, and I could/should go search on Lexis to see if I can find it.

What I distinctly remember was that the reporter visited Perkin-Elmer, which built the Hubble mirror. The article was written either before they had built the mirror, or as they were in the process of making it (you'll remember that they screwed it up). The manager said something along the lines that the contract had enabled them to build a facility where they could construct larger mirrors and this (paraphrasing, but I don't think by much) "would make them competitive for other projects." He was enthusiastic about that.

At the time I filed that away in my brain because it told me that P-E was NOT ALREADY making Hubble-size mirrors, and that meant that whoever was making the big mirrors for the KH-11 was not P-E (whose mirrors for the KH-9 were smaller). It was obviously Kodak.

Perkin Elmer hadn't made a 2.4 meter mirror before. Our best guess is that Kodak made the mirrors for the KH-11.

My assumption is that Kodak built the KH-11 mirror. When P-E got the contract to build the Hubble mirror and Kodak got the contract to build the backup mirror, it was a bit of a surprise to both companies, because Kodak had the experience.

P-E had made HEXAGON mirrors for awhile, but they were nowhere near the size of the KH-11 mirror.

Bob O'Dell in his "Oral History Interview" in 1985 makes a number of interesting remarks. According to him, the primary mirror diameters considered by NASA ("natural break points in aperture") were based on the KH-10 (1.8m/72 inch) and KH-11 (2.4m/94.5 inch) mirror sizes.

(...) Smith: Were you getting very much strong pressure from headquarters to drive lower than 2.4? It seems as if there was a continual probing going on?

O'Dell: (...) To be sure, the 3 meter figure was an arbitrary round number. (...) Now, the guy from Sky and Telescope, in that same issue, who wrote the article on the DOD connection, quote, according to Keyworth [George Keyworth — Science Advisor to President Reagan] and such there — I think it was a very well written article. Some facts are wrong in it, because they relate to classified things, I can't clarify those. But there was a general awareness — in that article, in fact, Keyworth talked openly about, tells us in the public record now that there were other things going on "behind the black curtain," and I had knowledge of a number of those things before I went to Marshall. And I found when I arrived there that a few people, in particular Jean Olivier, the chief engineer and at one time the project manager, had the same knowledge. So we could talk about that, and we could use that information.

Then they added people in headquarters, a few people in headquarters, with access to the same information, and what you can infer from this is that they saw that there were some natural breaking points on it, in aperture. Like these 1.8 mirrors that the Sky and Telescope article referred to — all of a sudden there are all these lightweight 1.8 meter mirrors available, and oh, there was a big reconnaissance mission cancelled about that time. A manned orbiting laboratory. It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to put those together. And there were probably other break points too, that people identified, in coming up with those numbers, so the people at headquarters knew that there could be some natural break points in aperture. When we were given those numbers, we were all comfortable with selecting those. Not to say any of us were thrilled, but we knew what the technology activities were, and taking advantage of things like that, so what I have said here doesn't compromise anybody. So this was used by headquarters, this kind of insight was used in picking the options in size that we should study. And so it was a logical process.

Smith: I think the term that's used in the Congressional hearings is that a 2.4 meter primary is closer to "national industrial capacity," and there are also references to this I think in the Science Working Group minutes. There was a meeting in October, '74, where there were cost savings identified on the OTA because it wouldn't require so much retooling and construction of new facilities, that kind of thing.

O'Dell: It turned out to be entirely wrong. We haven't used any of that, as it turns out. So the pressure was on us to reduce costs. We had some actual points to use as targets. And the coming out to 2.4 meters was the right decision. We had things that we generally didn't expect, like this business about 2.4 meters being just about the largest size you could package with a low moment of inertia, a point I made in the review panel. That was really the driver, on 2.4 meters. That's what kept the costs down. That was the big break on the costs. The uncertainty of cost in making 3 meter optics was great, but very hard to define, whereas the certainty of the difference in cost between reaction wheels and control moment gyros was clear. That was black and white. (...)

The HST optical systems failure report corroborates this:

(page 7-1): At the beginning of the program to build the Hubble 2.4 m primary mirror, P-E modified the refractive null corrector that had been used in building a 1.5 m mirror prototype.

So P-E didn't have experience building 2.4 m mirrors. They were adapting tooling designed for smaller mirrors.

How about the instruments?

Thomas C. Reed, an engineer who was Director of the NRO from August 1976-April 1977, would have had an intimate knowledge of the first KH-11 imaging sensors as the first was launched into orbit in December 1976. In his book At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War, p. 185 he states that the sensors were large light-sensitive diode arrays. I think it can be assumed that he knew what he was writing. Texas Instruments had been developing CCDs since 1971 but the large 800 x 800 pixel (640 kilopixel) devices were not available until 1979, 3 years after the launch of the first KH-11. The New World Encyclopedia in Chapter 7 states that Texas Instruments did not develop the 640 kilopixel CCD until 1979, 3 years after the launch of the first KH-11.

The Hubble Space Telescope WF/PC (Wide Field/Planetary Camera), one of the original instruments, was, I believe, built around the TI product mentioned above.

Summary

A few years before Hubble, the KH-11 was the first generation of spy satellite to move to a 2.4 meter primary mirror. The Hubble primary mirror was built by a different contractor than the KH-11 primary.

The satellite bus was also rather different. The KH-11 has a huge propellant tank (about 3.5 tons) containing hydrazine for thrusters. Hubble does not use thrusters; it relies on reaction wheels and magnetorquers.

The instruments were different as well.

This is still a preliminary answer, as there's a lot about KH-11 that hasn't been declassified yet. I think we can rule out the extreme of 'Hubble is a KH-11 pointed the other way', though.

Answer 5

tl;dr: Yes, related! Assuming Wikipedia's discussion that the Hubble mirror was chosen to be 2.4 meters in diameter to use the same "technology" as that for the spy mirror, and assuming that actually took place, then definitely. (here and here and here and Wikipedia) Making a telescope mirror is hard, difficult, and exacting work. Making one that is not necessarily a simple parabola, and that must have a figure better than diffraction limited is extremely hard. If there is a source for 2.4 meter mirrors that meet these constraints and you've got one shot, you are definitely going to leverage that technology and tooling!

Remember that unlike most telescopes larger than a meter, Hubble would be in space and so there would be no atmospheric seeing. The resolution of every image would be potentially diffraction limited, which certainly was not the case for surface telescopes at the time the Hubble was being designed and built. Today we have adaptive optics that can restore a large amount of the resolution taken away by seeing, but not so much back then.

That means that conventional 2-3 meter astronomical mirror-making may not necessarily have the same exacting specifications as Hubble would demand from space!

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Instead of re-quoting Wikipedia's KH-11 Kennen here I'll just point out that it has been nicely quoted in this answer where it states that Hubble's initial 3 meter diameter design was changed to 2.4 meters to take advantage of spy satellite technology.

Also both this and this answer mention that the boxes for the telescopes were similarly shaped.

Let's look at that quantitatively.

If Hubble's mirror's 2.4 meter diameter was dictated by existing fabrication equipment and tooling for primary mirror figure correction (a complicated process, and one that ultimately went wrong for Hubble anyway) then that would be a significant step towards "related".

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Wikipedia sez (about the "leftover mirrors"):

The f/1.2 primary has a diameter of 2.4 m, and is refocused by the secondary to give an overall f/8 focal ratio, making the optical telescope assembly shorter than that of HST.

That means D = f/1.2 or 1.2D = f = 2.88 meters for the spy satellite primary.

Source

This Hubble Press Kit says:

The secondary mirror has a magnification of 10.4x. It converts the primary-mirror converging rays from f/2.35 to a focal ratio system prime focus of f/24 and...

That means D = f/2.35 or 2.35D = f = 5.64 meters for the Hubble primary.

Python

So Hubble's primary while still fast, had only half the curvature of the spy mirror. Still, since the 2.4 meter diameter would fit all of the tooling necessary to make the spy mirrors, and at least some of the tooling to measure the figure during grinding and polishing to do corrections, then that would be an excellent savings in cost and time plus potentially the experience and documentation of the engineers doing the work!

above: Estimating Hubble's secondary mirror size from 20 years of Hubble Space Telescope optical modeling using Tiny Tim

Source

Python

Don't worry that the almost 60 meter focal length of Hubble's primary plus secondary seems too long to fit inside the instrument. There are plenty of more optical goodies back there to further massage (shape, size and apodize) the beam for the instrument package!

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The reason that the spy mirror had such an incredibly short focal length was to allow for large magnification by the secondary into a long combined focal length (for magnification) while sitting sideways in the spacecraft, looking out the side: