/Science

NASA is racing against the clock to pull off a pretty unusual operation in space: a robotic rescue to save the Swift telescope. This gamma-ray observatory, which has been active since 2004, started falling toward Earth a lot faster than the team expected. The culprit here is the recent cycle of solar storms, which ended up expanding our planet's upper atmosphere and creating a lot more drag on the satellite. To try and fix this before the telescope turns to dust on re-entry, the agency signed an emergency $30 million contract with a startup called Katalyst Space Technologies. The situation is kind of critical because Swift is already operating at an altitude of about 360 kilometers. Engineering calculated that the point of no return is right around 297 kilometers—if it passes that, there's nothing left to do. Some projections indicated it would cross that red line in October, so to buy some time and try to brake the fall, NASA turned off all of its scientific instruments back in February. Without the systems running, the friction decreases a bit. The rescue plan itself sounds like science fiction, but the approach is pretty mechanical. They're going launch a robot called *Lift*, which is roughly the size of a refrigerator and has massive 12-meter solar panels. The launch will happen from a Pegasus rocket in the Marshall Islands. The most curious detail is the robot's three mechanical arms, which were designed somewhat inspired by Lego pieces, with grippers made to latch onto Swift's outer structure. The problem is that the old telescope was never designed to be captured or serviced in space, so it's going to be a very delicate maneuver. If the docking works out after a month of orbital chasing, *Lift* will use its thrusters for about two months to push Swift back up to a safe orbit, at 600 kilometers altitude. A lot of people might wonder if it's worth spending 30 million on a piece of old equipment. But the reality is that NASA is working with a super tight budget right now and doesn't have the cash to build and launch a modern replacement. Plus, Swift still works incredibly well as a sort of space "first responder," detecting rapid cosmic explosions so that larger telescopes, like the James Webb, know exactly where to point. Ultimately, this mission is going to be the big test for this space roadside assistance market. If Katalyst manages to save Swift, their plan is to use a larger version of this robot to do the same for Hubble around 2028. Hubble has been on the road for almost 36 years now and suffers from the exact same altitude loss problem. We'll have to see if this docking tech actually works in practice, because the future of several space veterans depends quite a bit on it. --- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-swift-observatory-katalyst-space-rescue/