NASA has carried out some notable rescue missions over the past few years, including bringing home the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station last year. More recently, the agency sent up a probe in hopes of saving the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a satellite first launched in 2004 that began falling out of our planet’s orbit.
\n\nThe plan was for robotic arms on the probe, known as LINK, to grab onto the aging satellite and—with a powerful set of thrusters—drag the observatory back into position. The rescue robot was launched into space this past July but soon after suffered issues with its altitude systems, a key set of controls for moving in space. The mission had to be canceled.
\n\n“Swift wasn't designed to be serviced,” Ghonhee Lee—CEO of Katalyst Space, the company that developed LINK—stated just before the probe’s launch. And as Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, also noted at the time, this was “a high-risk, high-reward mission.”
\n\nNow, Swift will continue sinking. Like all low-orbit satellites, the observatory experiences air resistance from Earth’s upper atmosphere, causing it to gradually descend. Originally, scientists predicted the telescopes might not reach critical depths until 2030, but in recent years…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/