NASA races to save Swift telescope – Hubble next
NASA races to save an aging telescope from crashing into Earth with a daring rescue mission.
The $30 million rescue operation is set to begin this week with plans to launch a robotic lifeboat.
NASA has hired startup Katalyst Space Technologies to lift the Swift Observatory into a higher orbit where it can continue searching for some of the universe’s biggest explosions.
A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will pursue Swift when it lifts off from an atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific on an aircraft-launched Pegasus rocket. The rise could happen as early as Tuesday.
Swift, which has been scanning the universe since its launch in 2004, is sinking faster and faster due to recent intense solar activity. To survive, it needs to reach a higher, more stable orbit as quickly as possible.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope may be at risk next.
Like Swift, Hubble loses altitude as the sun explodes one after another.
Now 36 years old, it has been serviced repeatedly by spacewalking astronauts during the shuttle era and can now receive lift-extension support in 2028.
Katalyst space chief Ghonhee Lee said his company’s next-generation robot, currently under development, could save the day for the much larger Hubble.
It will take about a month for Katalyst’s autonomous spacecraft, called Lift, to rendezvous with Swift and capture it, and a few more months to increase its orbit from the current 360 km to the desired 600 km.
The gamma-ray observatory needs to be over 300 km away for rescue teams to work. According to the latest forecasts, it is expected to reach the point of no return in October.
According to Lee, if everything goes well, Swift could return to work by September.
“I have to be honest. No one thought this would be possible. No one thought we would get to where we are today,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA’s director of astrophysics.
True to its name, Swift is designed to spin rapidly to capture recent astronomical events such as gamma-ray bursts and exploding stars.
