La Jornada: Spacecraft takes off to rescue NASA telescope before it falls to Earth

Cape Canaveral. A three-armed spacecraft blasted off into orbit yesterday to rescue a NASA telescope that is rapidly losing altitude and in danger of falling to Earth.

Northrop Grumman launched the ship Link of Katalyst Space Technologies from the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific. The rocket Pegasus took off from the belly of a modified airplane, putting Link en route to reach and capture the Observatory Swift from NASA in about a month.

The Swift Observatory, launched in 2004, is descending faster than ever due to recent solar storms.

NASA paid Katalyst $30 million 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 salvage operation within a few years. It is also losing altitude due to increased atmospheric drag caused by solar flares.

Swift1.6 tons, is currently orbiting 360 kilometers above Earth.

Mission against the clock

Katalyst aims to raise the telescope 240 kilometers, back to where it all began. The propellants of Link They will activate to propel Swift slowly, so that there are no harsh jolts.

Katalyst put together the mission in just nine months. NASA insisted on doing it against the clock because the telescope will be too low to recover by the fall.

Without a boost, it is expected to hurtle towards its end 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 Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee before takeoff. “The biggest danger was always that we wouldn’t launch anything and let Swift burn up in the atmosphere. So we were always trying to avoid that risk, and our team has managed to do that.”