A Bold Satellite Rescue Mission Came Together in Record Time, but Will It Work?
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
"I consider this a success already, just from the fact that we're even going to try this." :
Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?
Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let's do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.
That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.
The Swift observatory is flying in low-Earth orbit, where the outermost layers of the atmosphere still exert some aerodynamic influence on satellites. The spacecraft launched in November 2004 on a mission to detect gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the known Universe. Despite its age, astrophysicists still rely on Swift's multi-wavelength instruments to identify and locate gamma-ray bursts for follow-up observations by other observatories.
But there's a hitch. Swift lacks any thrusters to maintain its orbit, so aerodynamic drag has gradually caused its altitude to decay. The observatory launched into an orbit roughly 363 miles (585 km) above the Earth. As of Thursday, Swift was flying at 225 miles (363 km). The decay rate will increase as the spacecraft dips into denser layers of the atmosphere until Swift finally burns up during reentry.
Swift is losing altitude faster than anticipated due to a period of extraordinary solar activity in recent years. An active Sun puffs up Earth's atmosphere, creating higher drag for satellites in low-Earth orbit. Satellites and space debris routinely reenter the atmosphere, and most of Swift is likely to burn up before it falls to Earth's surface.
"But this was not just any spacecraft," Domagal-Goldman said. "This is an observatory with unique capabilities for astrophysics, similar to what its name would imply. It is a swift observatory that can quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night ... So we decided, yeah, we want to go save this one, this time, because of how special it is. But then we had a different challenge of time was running out."
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