Despite everything that US government bodies have faced under the Trump administration, from budget cuts to blocked websites, NASA's still good for innovation.
Not only is it aiming to rescue a two-decade-old space-based telescope with an emergency mission designed and developed in about a year, but it will also launch that mission from the belly of an airplane.
Packed into a Pegasus XL rocket — the world's only airborne-launched rocket — a robotic spacecraft called LINK is supposed to boost the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory back into its orbit.
The Swift Observatory is a "unique telescope that has reinvented itself over the years," wrote Brad Cenko, Swift's Principal Investigator at NASA, in an email to DW.
"This mission is a great opportunity for NASA to try something novel, with real positive scientific benefit," said Cenko.
