Rush Rescue Mission for NASA's $500M Space Telescope Passes Key Milestone (spaceflightnow.com) 7
NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift space observatory was launched in 2004. But it's now "at risk of falling back through the atmosphere and burning up without intervention," reports Spaceflight Now.
Fortunately, a mission to prevent that "just passed a notable prelaunch testing milestone." On Friday, NASA announced that the Link spacecraft, manufactured by Katalyst Space Technologies to intervene before Swift's fate is sealed, completed its slate of environmental testing at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland... "Swift will likely re-enter the atmosphere sometime later this year if we don't attempt to lift it to a higher altitude, [said John Van Eepoel, Swift's mission director at NASA Goddard, in a NASA press release]. "Katalyst has gotten to this point in just eight months, and we're glad they were able to use NASA's facilities to test Link and draw on our expertise to help tackle questions that popped up along the way...."
"Given how quickly Swift's orbit is decaying, we are in a race against the clock, but by leveraging commercial technologies that are already in development, we are meeting this challenge head-on," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, at the time... Attempting an orbit boost is both more affordable than replacing Swift's capabilities with a new mission, and beneficial to the nation — expanding the use of satellite servicing to a new and broader class of spacecraft...."
Swift is in an orbit inclined 20.6 degrees from the equator, which is why Katalyst selected Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL air-launched rocket in November to fly the mission. "The versatility offered by Pegasus' unique air-launch capability provides customers with a space launch solution that can be rapidly deployed anywhere on Earth to reach any orbit," said Kurt Eberly, Director of Space Launch for Northrop Grumman.
The mission is set to launch in June.
Fortunately, a mission to prevent that "just passed a notable prelaunch testing milestone." On Friday, NASA announced that the Link spacecraft, manufactured by Katalyst Space Technologies to intervene before Swift's fate is sealed, completed its slate of environmental testing at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland... "Swift will likely re-enter the atmosphere sometime later this year if we don't attempt to lift it to a higher altitude, [said John Van Eepoel, Swift's mission director at NASA Goddard, in a NASA press release]. "Katalyst has gotten to this point in just eight months, and we're glad they were able to use NASA's facilities to test Link and draw on our expertise to help tackle questions that popped up along the way...."
"Given how quickly Swift's orbit is decaying, we are in a race against the clock, but by leveraging commercial technologies that are already in development, we are meeting this challenge head-on," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters, at the time... Attempting an orbit boost is both more affordable than replacing Swift's capabilities with a new mission, and beneficial to the nation — expanding the use of satellite servicing to a new and broader class of spacecraft...."
Swift is in an orbit inclined 20.6 degrees from the equator, which is why Katalyst selected Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL air-launched rocket in November to fly the mission. "The versatility offered by Pegasus' unique air-launch capability provides customers with a space launch solution that can be rapidly deployed anywhere on Earth to reach any orbit," said Kurt Eberly, Director of Space Launch for Northrop Grumman.
The mission is set to launch in June.
Didn't know they were qualified, but ... (Score:3)
Rush Rescue Mission for NASA's $500M Space Telescope
I'm happy the band [wikipedia.org] is available to help out. ;-)
great news (Score:2)
Good luck on the June launch, and best wishes for a successful mission!
Who you gonna call: SpaceX (Score:1)
Procrastination kills (Score:2, Insightful)
They've had 22 years to figure this out, but now it's a crisis requiring a rush mission because nobody thought it was important enough to do something a year ago, or five, or ten.
Re: Procrastination kills (Score:3)
Absolutely correct. But the silver lining is that the procrastination led NASA to approve a quick, cheap, and risky attempt to save it.
* If it works, it's a model that might get applied to others in the future.
* If it fails, well it was just $30 million, and the telescope was basically considered lost anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
They've had 22 years to figure this out, but now it's a crisis requiring a rush mission because nobody thought it was important enough to do something a year ago, or five, or ten.
Swift is also 22 years into it's two year lifetime. It's lasted 11 times longer than planned. I'm kind of astounded that it still works and hasn't had problems with things like gyros failing.
I'm all for trying to dock and boost it. It's a great opportunity to try it out and if it fails, well, the mission was due to end anyway. Satellite telescopes don't last forever. You just would have thought people would have been looking into this for years so it wasn't a rush job.