NASA races the clock to rescue Swift telescope

NASA says the Swift Observatory’s orbit is decaying faster than expected, and the agency is launching its Swift Boost rescue mission on June 27 to rendezvous with the aging telescope and raise it to a higher orbit. The effort relies on a commercial robotic spa

The plan is built around a countdown—because NASA believes the Swift Observatory is already running out of time.

NASA’s Swift Boost mission is on track to launch later this month to rescue the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. whose orbit is decaying faster than anticipated. In simple terms: the space telescope is falling too fast. and the agency intends to rendezvous with it and keep it in space for a few more years than it would have lasted without intervention. Launch has been set for June 27.

Behind the headline is a carefully choreographed sequence on the ground and in the air. NASA teamed up with Arizona company Katalyst Space last year to build LINK. a robotic spacecraft designed to dock with the observatory and tug it to a higher orbit. On June 9. engineers at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia finished installing LINK to a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. A few days later, on June 12, they attached the rocket to the belly of a Northrop Grumman plane called Stargazer.

Stargazer left Wallops on June 18 for Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean. where it will take off in a week’s time. The mission’s “boost” phase starts high in the sky: Stargazer will carry Pegasus XL to an altitude of around 40. 000 feet before releasing it in the air. The rocket will free fall for a few seconds before firing its motors and delivering LINK to space in approximately 10 minutes.

NASA says the reason this rescue is urgent comes down to physics behaving worse than expected. While all satellites in orbit lose altitude over time, Swift’s orbital decay has been faster than most. The agency explains it’s because the observatory has been experiencing more atmospheric drag than anticipated due to recent increases in the sun’s activity.

That “race against the clock” idea isn’t just a metaphor. When NASA announced its partnership with Katalyst. Shawn Domagal-Goldman said. “Given how quickly Swift’s orbit is decaying. we are in a race against the clock. but by leveraging commercial technologies that are already in development. we are meeting this challenge head-on.”.

Swift itself launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, but it has since become a general-purpose multi-wavelength observatory. NASA describes Swift as a “dispatcher” when a sudden event takes place in the universe—sending critical information so other observatories can follow up and learn more. One example NASA points to: it detected the location of an X-ray source that later turned out to be a 13-billion-year-old supernova. based on data subsequently gathered by other observatories like the James Webb telescope.

NASA Swift Boost mission Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Katalyst Space LINK robotic spacecraft Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL Stargazer Kwajalein Atoll orbital decay atmospheric drag solar activity gamma-ray bursts