The Space Telescope, Level 3

Group near telescope (the 'ahead' group) can be destroyed without aggroing the other groups. all aggro when attacking scope. finished mission in less than 5-8 minutes using a hurricane. med slots - t2 kinetic hardener. one AB. two t2 large shield extenders.
shield hp was at 83% when finished mission (with all aggroed on me)

easily done

Went to do this mission today and it was fairly different than what's described here.

The enemies in the pocket are the same, but upon warp-in I had maybe 5 seconds to acknowledge that everything was as described before -everything- in the pocket locked on to me and started firing.

My [active] tank isn't exactly amazing, but that many sentry guns blasting me along with the cruisers tore it up fairly quick. Just figure I should put a warning here for anyone expecting a walk in the park for this mission.

I only killed the telescope with a passive tank drake. Spawns were no troubles at all.

heed ViolentPacifit's description, original text should be ammended that the number of sentry gun spawns while I don't know whether static or dynamic, is considerable (6+) and the mission is not a walk in the park, solid tank required

Done This Mission Today In a drake fitted with T2 hardners Kinetic And Heat..Was Fairly Easy..The Enemies Locked On Me As Soon As I Arrived Within 5-10 Seconds..Took them Out Quickly And Used Drones To Assist...Overall easy Mission I Think

Confirming ViolentPacifist's experience: Everything gets aggro on warp-in...

blitz dont work

Ok, got it 4 times today, just did it again and decided to clean this up a bit. God I hate this mission. I've been running L3's in my Raven just to try blitzing a new corp standing up. The blitz on this is so so rare... the only time it worked was when I swapped a TP out for a sensor booster and started firing on the telescope before stuff spawned.

On warp in, I tried various ships on runs 2, 3, and 4. A frigate did not draw instant aggro after spawn. Everything above did... almost lost my cormy salvager. I can only assume its either VERY rare to not get full aggro, or its size dependent. Also, on warp out and back in, towers begin locking first, then everything locks after. Always full aggro on return unless the towers are down. When you DON'T have aggro, shooting the objective always draws full aggro.

Also, the damage is pretty bad until the towers are gone. With full aggro and towers still up, was overcoming a Raven running L shield boost + Amp + 2x IVU (all T2). Once the towers came down, the rest was cake... got down to 60% shield before I killed the towers (actually aligned in a L3 in a raven... sad). The dps with towers and full aggro was taking me down as fast as L3 AE bonus.

You'll definitely want an AB for this mission if you plan to kill all the sentry towers as they're spaced very far apart.

Total easy, passiva tank Raven. Cruises took out the Telescope and Sentries and HH2s took out everything else.

Harder than other level 3's with a T1-fit drake and not-great skills. Telescope is at about 65km from warp-in point, out of range of heavy missiles. Took me 4 warp-outs to do it. After taking out all the ships, my tank was nearly able to keep pace with the sentries and I had time to whittle down the telescope.

Note: returned to pocket (via gate) when telescope was dead but mission (and pocket) still active - was able to use MWD.

This mission is a bit more difficult than some level 3's because of the aggro from 3 sides and above on warp-in.

To do this mission I dropped the group by the telescope first. I killed the 2x frigates and then moved towards the group that is to the left from warp-in location, taking down the 2x cruisers from the telescope group while on the move left. I then killed the left group, then top, and by the time I finished those all, the group from the right was within range. Dropped those while moving to the telescope, staying to the left side of it to minimize damage from the right sentry group (they still hit but for less than half what the others did).

This was in a full T1 fit Drake:

7x Limos Heavy Launchers with Scourge

2x Large Shield Extenders
2x Thermal Shields (1 Active, 1 Passive)
2x Ballistic Shields (1 Active, 1 Passive)

2x Muon Coil Bolt Array
2x Shield Power Relays

3x Medium Core Defence Field Purger (not defense, Eve has c in place of s)

*I did have scout drones with me but never pulled them out for this mission.

Fairly inexpensive fit and quick to train the skills required. Shields never dropped below 60%, just remember to have those active resists running on warp-in. No where near being a difficult mission for a decently fit T1 passive tank Drake.

I could see a Blitz attempt being possible with my setup but the telescope does soak up some damage. The ships were all easy kills with decent bounty for the time spent, plus the loot and salvage that I came back for after hand-in.

Done in 1 go in a T1 Drake with a Shield Resistance Amplifier for each type.

Did this in a passive Drake

7x XR-3200 Heavy Missile Launchers
2x Medium FS-9 Regolith Shield Inductions (shield extenders)
1x Medium Ancillary Shield Booster (not really passive, but it's there if I need it)
2x Kinetic Deflection Field I
1x Thermic Dissipation Field I
2x BCUs
2x Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay I
3x Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

Just kill the ships and get the telescope. Unless you can go fast, the sentry guns are just too far out there. Not really worth the trouble to get the extra 200,000 isk from killing them cause they are so far out.

Just wanted to say that if you wanted to blitz this mission its not too hard. Did it in a drake as follows:

7x Arbalest heavy missile lauchers
2x Large Shield Extender IIs
3x Shield Recharger IIs
1x Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field
3x Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay Is
3x Medium Core Defense Field Purger

Went straight towards the Telescope @ my massive 160m/s lol, by the time I got to it, it was dead Looted what I could carry and warped out.

Did this in a passive Navy Drake, fairly easy, but bring an afterburner as the sentry towers take some time to get to otherwise

Quite a lot of damage from a very long range. Well over 60km out