A fridge-sized robot launched from the belly of a plane over the Pacific on Friday in a desperate bid to catch a falling telescope before it burns up in Earth's atmosphere. The LINK spacecraft, built by the private firm Katalyst Space Technologies from Flagstaff, Arizona, is on course to intercept the Swift observatory in about a month, using three robotic arms to grab hold of it and drag it back to safety.
Swift, the size of a large car and launched in 2004 for £220 million, detects some of the most powerful explosions in the universe – gamma-ray bursts from the violent deaths of giant stars and collisions of stellar remnants. But increased solar activity has pushed Earth's atmosphere outward, causing drag on Swift and slowing its orbit. It once sat at 373 miles (600 km) altitude; now it orbits at around 220 miles (360 km), with most of that descent happening in the past two years. Without intervention, it will explode upon re-entry in October.
“Nasa launches fridge-sized robot to catch falling Swift telescope before it burns up in October.”
“This is a high-risk, high-reward mission,” said Ghonhee Lee, chief executive of Katalyst Space Technologies. “The biggest danger was always we don't launch anything and we let Swift burn up in the atmosphere.” The rescue mission, costing Nasa £22 million, has never been attempted before. Engineers had less than a year to launch before Swift falls below 186 miles (300 km), where rescue becomes impossible. “What the Katalyst team has accomplished in just eight months is extraordinary,” Lee said in a news release.
Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University, called it “high risk” but said “Nasa obviously thinks it's worth a go. And the science community is hopeful about this because it's an important telescope that enables us to study super high-energy phenomena that we have no other means to study.” Barber explained that LINK will fire its small thrusters to slowly raise the telescope's orbit “to an altitude where it becomes stable for a long period of time. It will be a very slow, graceful lift, not a sudden boost to a higher orbit.”
Bad weather and technical issues caused last-minute launch delays before the Pegasus rocket blasted off from the Marshall Islands. If successful, the mission could open the door to rescuing other key satellites, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, saving hundreds of billions of pounds. But for now, all eyes are on Swift. If the three-armed robot fails, the telescope will be lost.