NASA is embarking on an ambitious rescue mission to prevent its aging Swift Observatory from plummeting back to Earth. The £24 million ($30 million) salvage operation is set to commence as early as this week, deploying a robotic spacecraft designed to boost the telescope into a more stable orbit.
The space agency has contracted startup Katalyst Space Technologies for the critical task. A three-armed robot, built by Katalyst, will launch from an atoll in the Pacific’s Marshall Islands aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket, with liftoff potentially occurring on Tuesday.
Swift, which has been scanning the cosmos for some of the universe’s most powerful explosions since its launch in 2004, has been losing altitude at an accelerated rate due to recent intense solar activity. It urgently requires a higher, more stable orbit to continue its vital work.
The iconic Hubble Space Telescope also faces a similar threat, as it too loses altitude amid frequent solar flares. Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee indicated that his company is developing a next-generation robot that could save the much larger Hubble in the coming years.
Only China has previously attempted such a manoeuvre, successfully boosting a satellite into a higher “graveyard” orbit four years ago.
“This is the first American space robot to go up and do anything like this,” Lee said “NASA has all these big senior observatories … all of them can benefit from a service like this. So what we’re proving with this mission is this is a new play in the playbook that’s available.”
It will take Katalyst’s autonomous spacecraft, named Lift, about a month to rendezvous with Swift and catch it, and another couple months to raise its orbit from the current 224 miles (360 kilometers) to the desired 373 miles (600 kilometers).
The 1.6-ton (1.4-metric ton) gamma ray observatory must be above 185 miles (300 kilometers) for the rescue to work. It’s expected to reach that point of no return in October, according to the latest estimates.
Roughly the size of a small kitchen refrigerator with a 40-foot (12-meter) solar wingspan, Lift sports three arms with a reach of just over 3 feet (1 meter). Each arm has two finger-like pinching grippers that resemble the hands of a Lego mini figure.
If all goes well, Swift could be back in business by September, according to Lee.
Worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Swift was never designed to be repaired, let alone retrieved by hands — human or otherwise. That’s what makes this so challenging, according to company officials, who stress there is no guarantee it will work.
NASA signed a contract with Katalyst last September with only two requests: It has to be a rush job, but please don’t make things worse. Nine months later, the company is ready to rumble.
“I have to be honest. No one thought it was going to be possible. No one thought we would get as far as we’ve already gotten today,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA’s astrophysics director.
NASA has bought a little more time for Swift, turning off all scientific instruments to slow its descent. Observations ceased in February.
NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said it’s worth the effort.
“If we let Swift reenter, we would lose that telescope. We would lose a lot of capability,” she said. “We don’t currently have the budget to build another one to replace that.”
While everything cannot be saved in space, Swift is special, said Domagal-Goldman.
True to its name, Swift is designed to pivot quickly to capture late-breaking astronomical events such as gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. With more discoveries expected by the Webb Space Telescope and soon-to-launch Roman Space Telescope, Swift, if saved, would be busier than ever as “NASA’s first responder.”
Katalyst sees Swift as the jumping-off point for a new repair business in space. The company’s next-generation robotic rescuer, scheduled to fly next year, will tackle satellites as high as 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers) up. Lee envisions hundreds of robots in orbit one day, not only fixing and hoisting satellites but also refueling them and building solar farms, data centers and other platforms.
Thirty-six-year-old Hubble, which received repeat servicing by spacewalking astronauts during the shuttle era, could follow in 2028 with a life-extending Katalyst boost.
“It’s a national treasure,” Fox said. “People love Hubble.”
