A three-armed spacecraft took off Friday toward orbit to rescue a telescope from the POT which is in danger of falling back to Earth.
Northrop Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologies’ Link spacecraft from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The Pegasus rocket lifted off from the bottom of a modified aircraft, putting Link on a trajectory to reach and capture NASA’s Swift Observatory in about a month.
Launched in 2004, Swift is descending faster than ever due to recent solar storms. NASA will pay $30 million to Katalyst to capture the telescope and raise its orbit so it can continue tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe, such as gamma-ray bursts and exploding stars.
If all goes well, Swift could scan the cosmos again by September. Observations are currently paused to preserve the telescope’s orbit as long as possible.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope could be a candidate for a similar rescue operation within a few years. It is also losing altitude due to increased atmospheric drag caused by flares from the sun.
Swift, weighing 1.6 tons (1.4 metric tons), currently orbits 224 miles (360 kilometers) above Earth. Katalyst seeks to raise the altitude of the telescope by about 150 miles (240 kilometers), until returning it to the altitude where it started. Link’s thrusters will ignite to propel Swift slowly, without harsh jolts.
Katalyst organized the mission in just nine months. NASA insisted it be done urgently because the telescope will be too low to recover in the fall. Without a boost, it is projected to fall and be destroyed in October.
Bad weather and technical problems caused a series of last-minute delays to the launch.
“This is a high risk, high reward mission.”said Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space, before takeoff. “The biggest danger was always not launching anything and letting Swift burn up in the atmosphere. So we always tried to avoid that risk, and our team managed it.”.