NASA mobilizes to prevent the Swift telescope from falling back to Earth
(Cape Canaveral) NASA races to save an aging telescope from falling toward Earth with a daring rescue mission.
This rescue operation, costing 30 million, will begin this week with the planned launch of a rescue robot.
NASA has tapped startup Katalyst Space Technologies to propel the Swift Observatory into a higher orbit, where it can continue to detect some of the biggest explosions in the universe.
A three-arm spacecraft built by Katalyst will pursue Swift as soon as it lifts off from an atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific aboard an aircraft-launched Pegasus rocket. Takeoff could take place as early as Tuesday.
Peering into the cosmos since its launch in 2004, Swift is sinking faster and faster due to recent strong solar activity. It must reach a higher, more stable orbit as soon as possible to survive.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope – also under threat – could be next on the list.
Like Swift, Hubble loses altitude as the Sun emits successive solar flares. Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space, said his company’s next-generation robot, still under development, could come to the rescue of the much larger Hubble Telescope within a few years.
Only China has attempted a mission similar to the one about to take place, successfully placing a satellite in a higher graveyard orbit four years ago.
“This is the first American space robot to go into orbit to accomplish such a mission,” Mr. Lee told the Associated Press. NASA has all these great, long-standing observatories […] everyone can benefit from a service like this. So what we are demonstrating with this mission is that this is a new strategy to add to our arsenal. »
It will take Katalyst’s autonomous spacecraft, called Link, about a month to reach and catch up with Swift, then another two months to raise its orbit from its current altitude of 360 kilometers to the desired altitude of 600 kilometers.
The 1.6-ton (1.4 metric ton) gamma-ray observatory must be at an altitude of more than 300 kilometers for the rescue to be successful. It should reach this point of no return in October, according to the latest estimates.
Equivalent in size to a small kitchen refrigerator and with a solar span of 12 meters, Link is equipped with three arms with a reach of just over 1 meter. Each arm has two finger-shaped pincers that resemble the hands of a Lego minifigure.
If all goes well, Swift could be back up and running by September, Lee said.
Several challenges
Worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Swift was never intended to be repaired, much less recovered by hand – human hands or otherwise. That’s what makes it so difficult, according to company officials, who stress there’s no guarantee it will work.
NASA signed a contract with Katalyst last September with only two conditions: it had to be urgent work, but above all, it could not make the situation worse. Nine months later, the company is ready to take action.
“I have to be honest. Nobody thought it would be possible. No one thought we would go as far as we have already today,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of astrophysics at NASA.
NASA bought Swift some time by turning off all of its scientific instruments to slow its descent. Sightings stopped in February.
Nicky Fox, head of science missions at NASA, said the effort was worth it.
“If we let Swift re-enter the atmosphere, we would lose this telescope. We would lose a lot of capacity, she argued. We currently do not have the budget to build another one to replace it. »
While not everything in space can be saved, Swift is a special case, Domagal-Goldman said.
Other satellites to save
True to its name, Swift is designed to rotate quickly to capture up-to-the-minute astronomical events, such as gamma-ray bursts and exploding stars.
With new discoveries expected from the Webb Space Telescope and the Roman Space Telescope, imminent for launch, Swift, if rescued, would be in greater demand than ever as “NASA’s first responder.”
Katalyst sees Swift as the starting point for new repair activity in space. The company’s next-generation rescue robot, scheduled for launch next year, will operate on satellites up to 35,800 kilometers above sea level.
Mr. Lee envisions that one day hundreds of robots will be in orbit, not only repairing and towing satellites, but also refueling them and building solar farms, data centers and other platforms.
Thirty-six-year-old Hubble, which has benefited from several maintenance operations performed by astronauts during spacewalks in the shuttle era, could follow suit in 2028 thanks to a Katalyst upgrade aimed at extending its lifespan.
“It’s a treasure of the country,” recalled M.me Fox. People love Hubble. »
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