'High-risk' rescue mission launches to save Nasa telescope that is falling to Earth

Katalyst threw the mission together in just nine months (Sophia Roberts/Nasa via AP)

A three-armed spacecraft has rocketed into orbit to rescue a Nasa telescope that is in danger of crashing back to Earth.

Global aerospace company Northrop Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologies’ Link spacecraft from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific to help. 

The Pegasus rocket blasted off from the belly of a modified plane, putting Link on course to reach and capture Nasa’s Swift Observatory in about a month.

The telescope, known as the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, was launched in 2004, and is dedicated to studying gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy cosmic events. It is now sinking faster than ever because of recent solar storms.

Nasa is paying $30m (€26.2m) for Katalyst to capture the telescope and boost its orbit so it can continue tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe, such as 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 telescope’s orbit as long as possible.

Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope could be a candidate for a similar salvage operation in a few years. It is also slipping in altitude because of increased atmospheric drag caused by the Sun’s outbursts.

Swift currently is circling 360km above Earth. Katalyst aims to raise the telescope’s altitude by 241km, back to where it all began. Link’s thrusters will fire to boost Swift slowly, so there is 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 autumn. Without a boost, it is predicted to plunge to its demise in October.

Bad weather and technical issues caused a series of last-minute launch delays.

“This is a high-risk, high-reward mission,” Katalyst Space chief executive Ghonhee Lee said ahead of lift-off. 

“The biggest danger was always we don’t 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.”