An Earth-orbiting NASA telescope is slowly falling out of the sky, with a 90% chance of uncontrolled reentry by the end of 2026. To avoid this risk and extend the observatory\u2019s lifespan, NASA has tapped an Arizona-based spaceflight startup to launch a daring rescue mission.<\/p>\n
Katalyst Space Technologies, headquartered in Flagstaff, has received<\/a> a $30 million award from NASA to give the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory<\/a> an orbital boost. To that end, Katalyst is developing the \u201cLINK\u201d spacecraft, designed to autonomously rendezvous with Swift and shift it into a more stable orbit.<\/p>\n Katalyst has less than eight months to get LINK off the ground and save Swift, with a launch deadline of June 2026. Oh, and according to a company announcement<\/a> made Wednesday, it plans to launch the mission via a rocket dropped out of a plane. No biggie.<\/p>\n Saving Swift from its slow demise <\/p>\n The Swift observatory launched in 2004 to observe gamma-ray bursts<\/a>\u2014the most violent explosions in the known universe. Over its two decades in low-Earth orbit, Swift has gradually lost altitude, as all satellites do. But recent spikes in solar activity<\/a> have increased atmospheric drag on the spacecraft, accelerating its orbital decay to a concerning rate.<\/p>\n As Swift sinks back to Earth, atmospheric drag intensifies. At this rate, the observatory has a 50% chance of uncontrolled reentry by mid-2026 and a 90% chance by the end of next year, according to Katalyst. Though Swift would completely burn up in the atmosphere and pose no threat to people and property on Earth, NASA and Katalyst hope to extend its lifespan.<\/p>\n Pegasus\u2019s heroic comeback <\/p>\n Katalyst has selected<\/a> Northrop Grumman\u2019s Pegasus rocket as the launch vehicle for this rescue mission. Pegasus is an air-launched rocket, meaning it gets dropped<\/a> from a carrier aircraft at 40,000 feet (12,000 meters), then freefalls for five seconds before igniting its first-stage rocket motor and ascending to orbit.<\/p>\n Pegasus\u2019s launch cadence has slowed significantly as cheaper, ground-launched rockets have become widely available. The Katalyst mission will be its first flight since 2021<\/a>. According to the company, \u201cPegasus is the only system that can meet the orbit, timeline, and budget simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n Swift orbits the planet at a 20.6-degree inclination to avoid<\/a> the South Atlantic Anomaly\u2014a large weak spot in Earth\u2019s magnetic field that exposes satellites to higher levels of radiation. Because of this, a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg would require a huge amount of propellant to reach the right orbital plane for this mission, Kieran Wilson, vice president of technology at Katalyst, told SpaceNews<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pegasus\u2019s air-launch design overcomes this hurdle. And since it\u2019s a flight-proven vehicle, it\u2019s ready to launch on short notice.<\/p>\n Once Pegasus deploys LINK, the spacecraft will approach Swift with a series of precise maneuvers known as rendezvous proximity operations, according to Katalyst. Because Swift doesn\u2019t have docking ports or grappling fixtures for LINK to grab onto, it will use a custom-built robotic capture mechanism to attach to a feature on the body of the satellite and adjust its orbit.<\/p>\n If the mission succeeds, it won\u2019t just extend the lifespan of a highly valuable research satellite; it will demonstrate a useful new capability for NASA. Being able to execute a rapid response to orbital decay would be a key asset to the agency, helping it better maintain its fleet of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Earth-orbiting NASA telescope is slowly falling out of the sky, with a 90% chance of uncontrolled reentry…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":393427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[38218,916,5565,2540,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-393426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-low-earth-orbit","9":"tag-nasa","10":"tag-rockets","11":"tag-satellites","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115584884377678696","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}