NASA telescopes used to be governed by ITAR. They've relaxed those a lot, but you had to use software to transmit the data encrypted all the way to your science pipelines (e.g. Telescope to White Sands to Goddard to $INSTITUTION)

That’s because they’re telescopes. NASA’s telescopes are basically spy satellites pointed outwards.

> NASA’s telescopes are basically spy satellites pointed outwards.

Literally in at least one case. The NRA donated two surveillance satellites to NASA back in 2012 [1] and the plan is to fly one of them as the WFIRST telescope [2]. I don't think there is a launch date yet.

[1] https://www.space.com/16000-spy-satellites-space-telescopes-...

[2] https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/02/18/nasa-moves-forward-wit...

> The NRA

NRO damnit

it's also true for the xray/gamma ray/etc... observatories

Of intelligence data there is. Read up on ITAR and EAR. So you don’t think that the satellites AWS will interface with will be facing earth with sensors?

I’ve worked in an ITAR industry. This topic isn’t about intelligence data :)

Agree, I also worked under ITAR restrictions in the launch industry.

ITAR is pretty limited in what it considers intelligence/military. Unless you're looking for missile launches or doing remote sensing with technologies that are better than what's available to the general public, it probably won't apply. There's plenty of interesting things you can do without running afoul of ITAR/USML definitions.

Some telemetry and sensor data may be EAR99, which is as far as export restrictions go is about as nonrestrictive as it gets. For example iTunes is EAR99— that's why the EULA says you're not allowed to use it to develop nuclear or biological weapons.