Comment Re:Transmitter? (Score 1) 74
It's a telescope, so it's a receiver. Why - and, indeed, what - was it transmitting?
It could send out radar pulses to objects within the solar system, then listen to the echo. This could be for basic ranging and getting precise orbital parameters, it also could be used for imaging otherwise dim objects, like asteroids. This is how, for instance, we could confirm that asteroid Didymos had a moon, which made it a perfect candidate for smashing an impactor into.
When you think about it, this is pretty wild. They have to time to outgoing radar pulse and direction such that, after minutes or hours of propagation at the speed of light, it intercepts the target. Then, minutes or hours later, they need to point re-point the telescope to capture the return image. It's planetary flash photography, but with significant delays.
And, yeah, they also occasionally broadcast messages to the cosmos.