A mission to prevent a NASA space telescope from coming to a fiery demise in Earth’s atmosphere has failed, the agency announced Wednesday.
\n\nThe Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched into low Earth orbit in 2004, has been rapidly sinking in its orbit around Earth and is expected to plunge through the atmosphere later this year, breaking apart on re-entry.
\n\nLast month, NASA launched a first-of-its-kind rescue mission to boost the Swift observatory to a higher altitude, aiming to extend its life and keep its science work going. To do that, the Arizona-based company Katalyst Space Technologies developed a spacecraft called LINK, which was designed to capture the observatory and raise its orbit over several months.
\n\nLINK launched July 3 on Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket. Then the problems began.
\n\nMission managers successfully established communications with LINK after launch, but less than two weeks into the flight, teams began reporting problems with the probe’s orientation.
\n\nIn a July 15 blog post, NASA officials said Katalyst engineers had “addressed early communications and attitude control issues.”
\n\nBut software patches appeared to fail, and on July 28, NASA said LINK’s attitude control systems, which stabilize the spacecraft and help orient it in space…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/