A commercial spacecraft sent to extend a lifeline to NASA’s Swift Observatory succeeded in closing in on the decaying telescope and snapping photographs more than a week after the rescue attempt was abandoned.
But the three-armed robotic salvager was forced to turn away due to low fuel, according to Katalyst Space Technologies, which carried out the daring operation.
“We got so close, but so far,” Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee told The Associated Press this week.
Katalyst’s Link craft got within 15 kilometers (nine miles) of Swift last weekend, using its own sensors to gather data on the doomed telescope for NASA. Although the rescue effort had been called off in August because of Link’s own troubles in orbit, the company wanted practice for future satellite service calls.
Link went into an uncontrollable spin soon after launching to Swift’s rescue in July. Flight controllers managed to reduce the tumbling and stabilize the craft, using up precious fuel. Ultimately, there was not enough fuel remaining to boost the aging Swift to a higher, longer-lasting orbit so it could continue observing the cosmos.
Lee blamed Link’s difficulties on the rush to get it flying. The mission was thrown together in just nine months, and engineers often had to grab whatever parts were available instead of waiting for preferred components, he said.
NASA paid the company $30 million to carry out the attempt, which was always going to be rushed. Both sides viewed it as an experiment with little to lose, although no one wanted a wreck that would unleash clouds of space debris.
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t the outcome that we were expecting,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said following Sunday’s launch of the Roman Space Telescope. “But that’s exactly the type of missions that we should be flying at NASA. We will learn from that.”
Isaacman said it makes sense to extend the life of a valuable spacecraft, especially if the cost to salvage it is less than to replace it. That is why the Roman telescope was designed to be refuelable even though it is headed toward an observation point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away.
It is unlikely that Link has enough fuel left to attempt another close approach to Swift, according to Lee. But it can keep exercising its 3-foot (1-meter) arms and provide important data before it reenters and burns up in the atmosphere in the next few weeks, he said.
Launched in 2004, Swift has a little more time remaining in orbit, depending on how active the sun is. Intense solar storms in recent years brought the telescope down much sooner than expected. As of Friday, its orbit had dropped to 208 miles (335 kilometers), barely half as high as when it set out to scan cosmic explosions.
NASA anticipates Swift will plunge through the atmosphere sometime between October and year’s end. The space agency resumed observations with the telescope last week after halting them early this year to save power.
Like Swift, the Hubble Space Telescope’s orbit has also been shortened by solar activity. Katalyst is developing a next-generation spacecraft that could boost the 36-year-old Hubble to a longer-lasting orbit.
“Hubble does still have a few years of life yet, right? So the good news is this isn’t imminent,” Lee said.
Servicing old telescopes and other satellites used to be “a very, very niche concept,” he added, “and we believe it’s going to become more and more commonplace.”