NASA is fast-tracking a mission to launch a spacecraft that will attempt to boost another one of the agency’s science satellites into a higher orbit before it falls to a fiery death in Earth’s atmosphere. The spacecraft was recently prepped for encapsulation inside its rocket at one of NASA’s launch facilities.
What is it?
This photo shows Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing satellite awaiting encapsulation inside the fairing of Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Pegasus XL is an air-launched rocket that is carried to around 39,000 feet (12,000 meters) by a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar mothership aircraft, known as Stargazer. Once at altitude, the aircraft releases the rocket, which then ignites its motor to send its payload to space.
In this case, that payload is the LINK servicing satellite, which will attempt to rendezvous with NASA’s $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, or Swift. The satellite’s orbit has decayed from an initial 373 miles (600 kilometers) to about 249 miles (400 km), but NASA wants to save it by using LINK to boost it back up to a healthy orbit.
Why is it incredible?
NASA’s mission to boost Swift is an ambitious one, not only because it will involve using one spacecraft to rendezvous with and boost another, but because NASA is still attempting to predict where Swift will be when LINK meets up with it.
The mission is incredible, too, in that it will involve four separate vehicles: the Stargazer mothership, the Pegasus XL rocket, Katalyst Space’s Link spacecraft, and NASA’s Swift observatory.
Swift launched on Nov. 20, 2004, on a planned two-year mission to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.