A mission to rescue one of NASA’s storied space observatories from falling to Earth has launched on a daring, first-of-its-kind endeavor.
If successful, it will mark the first time a commercial robotic mission has captured an uncrewed NASA spacecraft that wasn’t designed to be serviced in space, according to the agency.
Without intervention, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory would dip below a key orbital threshold this month due to atmospheric drag and the impact of recent solar activity. The observatory has studied an array of cosmic objects across multiple wavelengths of light for nearly 22 years.
The Swift operations team at Penn State University’s Eberly College of Science has reduced power usage and steered the observatory to eye the cosmos from a more streamlined position. But once sinking below an optimal altitude of about 185 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth, Swift is likely to reenter our planet’s atmosphere this fall, according to NASA’s predictions.
After realizing that the Swift mission might come to an end much sooner than anticipated, NASA put out a call for proposals for a solution.
