{"id":909679,"date":"2026-07-03T11:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/909679\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T11:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:17:15","slug":"rescue-mission-is-launched-to-save-an-aging-nasa-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/909679\/","title":{"rendered":"Rescue mission is launched to save an aging NASA telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A three-armed spacecraft rocketed into orbit Friday to rescue a NASA telescope<\/a> that\u2019s in danger of crashing back to Earth. <\/p>\n

Northrop Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologies\u2019 Link spacecraft from the Marshall Islands<\/a> in the Pacific. The Pegasus rocket blasted off from the belly of a modified airplane, putting Link on course to reach and capture NASA\u2019s Swift Observatory in about a month. <\/p>\n

Launched in 2004, Swift is sinking faster than ever because of recent solar storms<\/a>. NASA is paying $30 million for Katalyst to capture the telescope and boost its orbit so it can continue tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe, like gamma ray bursts and exploding stars.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, Swift could be back scanning the cosmos by September. Observations are currently on hold to preserve the telescope\u2019s orbit as long as possible.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> could be a candidate for a similar salvage operation in a few years. It\u2019s also slipping in altitude because of increased atmospheric drag caused by the sun\u2019s outbursts.<\/p>\n

The 1.6-ton (1.4-metric ton) Swift currently is circling 224 miles (360 kilometers) above Earth. Katalyst aims to raise the telescope\u2019s altitude by 150 miles (240 kilometers), back to where it all began. Link\u2019s thrusters will fire to boost Swift slowly, so there\u2019s no heavy jostling.<\/p>\n

Katalyst threw the mission together in just nine months. NASA insisted on a rush job because the telescope will be too low to recover by the fall. Without a boost, it\u2019s predicted to plunge to its demise in October.<\/p>\n

Bad weather and technical issues caused a series of last-minute launch delays.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a high-risk, high-reward mission,\u201d Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee said ahead of liftoff. \u201cThe biggest danger was always we don\u2019t launch anything and we let Swift burn up in the atmosphere. So we were always trying to avoid that risk, and our team has done that.\u201d <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A three-armed spacecraft rocketed into orbit Friday to rescue a NASA telescope that\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":898631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[166,4514,64,57,353385,165,27902,159,783,167,16523,164,158,61,67,132,68,107],"class_list":["post-909679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","tag-astronomy","tag-business","tag-general-news","tag-marshall-islands","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-planets","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-exploration","tag-space-launches","tag-spacecraft","tag-technology","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116855770141916292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909679","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=909679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}