Astronomy: Clever hack gets 2x Hubble's resolution, from the ground
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I've worked on a dissimilar technique called super resolution. Essentially, you take a median pixel while super resolving over a set of images from a video stream.
It is much less useful than getting better cameras and optics. In the case of bomb disposal robots that send compressed, down-sampled digital video streams, just sending a low-compression, full-resolution image turns out to be the cheapest and easiest way to proceed.
Such simple solutions don't get you research grants though. One problem with academia is the malice of the new. If it isn't novel, it doesn't quite matter what system you can build. This completely ignores the idea that system integration and deployment yields new information than lab prototypes.
Astronomy is different. The first telescope was built in 1600. Telescope technology hasn't changed much since then. The engineering has gotten better though -- we spend money to get as many photons as possible.
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In regards to the "X beats HST" stories that seem to constantly populate the news: there's no optical telescope/instrument out there that can image as faint as HST, over such a wide field of view, with such high resolution. There won't be for at least another decade.
The last point is sad but true.
We're stuck with the atmosphere we've got, so any increase in resolution from ground based systems will require this kind of stuff.
I can answer your question though if you can explain the meaning behind "hack". It can mean either good or bad, so I don't like using it unless the context makes it obvious.