CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) โ A three-armed spacecraft rocketed into orbit Friday toย rescue a NASA telescopeย thatโs in danger of crashing back to Earth.
Northrop Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologiesโ Link spacecraft from theย Marshall Islandsย in the Pacific. The Pegasus rocket blasted off from the belly of a modified airplane, putting Link on course to reach and capture NASAโs Swift Observatory in about a month.
Launched in 2004, Swift is sinking faster than ever because ofย recent solar storms. 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.
If all goes well, Swift could be back scanning the cosmos by September. Observations are currently on hold to preserve the telescopeโs orbit as long as possible.
NASAโsย Hubble Space Telescopeย could be a candidate for a similar salvage operation in a few years. Itโs also slipping in altitude because of increased atmospheric drag caused by the sunโs outbursts.
The 1.6-ton (1.4-metric ton) Swift currently is circling 224 miles (360 kilometers) above Earth. Katalyst aims to raise the telescopeโs altitude by 150 miles (240 kilometers), back to where it all began. Linkโs thrusters will fire to boost Swift slowly, so there’s no heavy jostling.
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, itโs predicted to plunge to its demise in October.
Bad weather and technical issues caused a series of last-minute launch delays.
โThis is a high-risk, high-reward mission,โ Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee said ahead of liftoff. โThe biggest danger was always we donโt 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.โ
