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NASA prepares to launch daring rescue to save aging telescope from falling to Earth
NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission.
The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver.
NASA hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe's biggest explosions. A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once it takes off from an atoll in the Pacific's Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket. Liftoff could occur as early as Tuesday.
Scanning the cosmos since its launch in 2004, Swift has been sinking faster and faster because of recent intense solar activity. It needs to get to a higher, more stable orbit as soon as possible to survive.
Partners, NASA Ready for June Launch of Swift Boost Mission
A mission to raise the orbit of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean.
A robotic servicing satellite called LINK, built by Katalyst Space, will blast into orbit on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. LINK will rendezvous with, grapple, and slowly raise Swift’s altitude over several months, preventing it from re-entering Earth’s atmosphere later this year.
“Swift is NASA’s multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos,” said S. Bradley Cenko, principal investigator, Swift, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It observes the sky using a wide range of light and rapidly points at short-lived outbursts, alerting other facilities in space and on the ground to help coordinate follow-up observations. For the last two decades, Swift has been a key player in NASA’s efforts to understand how the universe works, and we’re looking forward to getting back to that work after the boost is complete.”
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Inside NASA’s daring race to save a doomed space telescope
A high-stakes mission is on the cusp of launching an uncrewed spacecraft on a bold journey to save a NASA telescope from certain doom as it plummets back to Earth.
NASA's Swift Observatory is at risk of falling to its fiery death in the atmosphere after more than two decades of observing the cosmos from Earth orbit.
But that won't happen if NASA has anything to say about it.
In less than a year, the U.S. space agency and commercial aerospace partners have raced against the clock to mount a daring rescue mission that could finally commence in June. If successful, the venture NASA understatedly refers to as the "Swift boost mission" would not only extend the life of the observatory, but be the first of its kind.
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