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by nerfbatplz 1806 days ago
Considering Hubble was an old NRO design that they donated, I bet there are more backup parts than are publically known to be available.
2 comments

Just to clarify: Hubble was not an NRO donation, although it bears some similarity to the KH-11, an NRO satellite from the 70s. It is not confirmed whether the two actually share parts, as the KH-11 is still classified.

The NRO did donate two unlaunched telescopes to NASA in 2012 (with optics present but sans electronics), which still have not yet been retrofitted and launched.

If you read up on it, the NRO gave a shell for a Keyhole something to do NASA. It had no optics and no sensor AFAIK, that was on NASA to build.