A Satellite Falling Out of Orbit Embarks on Its Final Mission
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.
The 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.
“Swift wasn't designed to be serviced,” Ghonhee Lee—CEO of Katalyst Space, the company that developed LINK—statedjust before the probe’s launch. And as Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to www.wired.com. To see the full text click HERE
