Swift's Descent Accelerates as Sun Batters Its Orbit
NASA is racing to save the Swift Observatory from falling back to Earth with a robotic rescue mission launching as early as Tuesday from the Marshall Islands. The $30 million salvage operation comes as the aging telescope sinks faster due to intense solar activity, forcing the space agency to act before Swift reaches the point of no return in October.
The telescope, which has scanned the cosmos since its launch in 2004, must stay above 185 miles altitude to survive. Swift currently orbits at 224 miles and needs to reach 373 miles to stabilize. NASA has already turned off all scientific instruments to slow its descent, halting observations in February.
A Three-Armed Robot Built for an Impossible Task
Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup hired by NASA last September, designed a spacecraft called Lift to perform the rescue. The 1.6-ton autonomous robot features three arms with a reach of just over 3 feet, each equipped with two finger-like pinching grippers resembling Lego mini figure hands. The spacecraft, roughly the size of a small kitchen refrigerator with a 40-foot solar wingspan, will launch aboard an airplane-launched Pegasus rocket.
Lift will take about a month to rendezvous with Swift and catch it, then spend another couple months raising the telescope's orbit. If successful, Swift could resume operations by September. Company officials stress there is no guarantee the mission will work, as Swift was never designed to be repaired or retrieved by any hands, human or robotic.
Why Swift Matters More Than Its Age Suggests
Swift specializes in detecting gamma ray bursts and exploding stars, pivoting quickly to capture late-breaking astronomical events. NASA science mission chief Nicky Fox said losing the telescope would be irreplaceable. "If we let Swift reenter, we would lose that telescope. We would lose a lot of capability," Fox said. "We don't currently have the budget to build another one to replace that."
With discoveries expected from the Webb Space Telescope and the soon-to-launch Roman Space Telescope, Swift would function as "NASA's first responder" if saved, responding to urgent astronomical events. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA's astrophysics director, acknowledged the audacity of the attempt. "No one thought it was going to be possible. No one thought we would get as far as we've already gotten today," he said.
Hubble Could Be Next, Opening a New Space Industry
Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee called Swift the jumping-off point for a new repair business in space, saying the mission proves "this is a new play in the playbook" for space operations. The company's next-generation robot, still in development, could rescue Hubble, which is also losing altitude due to solar activity.
Only China has attempted a similar mission, successfully boosting a satellite into a higher graveyard orbit four years ago. 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. Hubble, a 36-year-old national treasure that received servicing from spacewalking astronauts during the shuttle era, could receive a life-extending boost from Katalyst in 2028.
