NASA Telescope Threatened by Solar Storms as Emergency Rescue Mission Begins

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — On Friday, a three-armed spacecraft launched into orbit to save a NASA telescope that may fall back to Earth.

From the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, Northrop Grumman launched the Link spacecraft from Katalyst Space Technologies. In around a month, Link would arrive at and take control of NASA's Swift Observatory after the Pegasus rocket launched from the belly of a modified aircraft.

Due to recent solar storms, Swift, which was launched in 2004, is dropping more quickly than before. In order to capture the telescope and raise its orbit so it can continue monitoring some of the largest events in the cosmos, such as gamma ray bursts and exploding stars, NASA is paying $30 million to Katalyst.

Swift might return to scanning the universe by September if everything goes according to plan. To maintain the telescope's orbit as long as possible, observations are currently suspended.

In a few years, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope may be the subject of a comparable recovery effort. Additionally, the increasing atmospheric drag brought on by the sun's eruptions is causing it to drop in altitude.

At the moment, the 1.6-ton (1.4-metric-ton) Swift is in orbit 224 miles (360 kilometers) above Earth. Katalyst wants to return the telescope to its original location by increasing its altitude by 150 miles (240 kilometers). Swift will be gradually boosted by Link's thrusters, preventing significant jostling.

In under nine months, Katalyst put the mission together. The telescope will sink too low to recover by fall, therefore NASA insisted on a quick fix. It is expected to plummet to its demise in October in the absence of a stimulus.

There were several last-minute launch delays due to bad weather and technical problems.Before takeoff, Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space, stated, "This is a high-risk, high-reward mission." "The biggest danger was always we don't launch anything and we let Swift burn up in the atmosphere. So we were always trying to avoid that risk, and our team has done that."

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