Szybki czas przygotowania misji.
Od jej powodzenia zależeć mogą losy innego 36-letniego teleskopu, którego misję chciał przedłużyć Jared Isaacman, który został później administratorem NASA.
1st-of-its-kind mission will attempt to save aging space telescope using robot spacecraft
ByMatthew Glasser and Briana Alvarado June 23, 2026, 6:28 PM
NASA's Swift telescope could be destroyed in months if nothing is done.
(...) To save the satellite before time runs out, the Arizona-based company built its 935-pound rescue spacecraft in just 250 days. LINK was designed to physically interact with Swift despite the observatory not being designed for this kind of operation.
Once in orbit, it will take about three weeks for LINK to rendezvous with and capture the 22-year-old observatory. Over two to three months, the spacecraft will use its thrusters to raise Swift into a more stable orbit. The two will then separate as LINK lowers itself back into Earth's atmosphere, where it will burn up, keeping it from adding to the rest of the space debris in our orbit. (...)
https://abcnews.com/International/1st-kind-mission-attempt-save-aging-space-telescope/story?id=134130965A bold satellite rescue mission came together in record time, but will it work?Stephen Clark – 19 cze 2026 02:39
“I consider this a success already, just from the fact that we’re even going to try this.”WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What’s more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?
Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. “They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division.
That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst’s Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift’s orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done. (...)
NASA engineers estimate Swift will fall below an altitude of 186 miles (300 km) this fall—perhaps around October. At that altitude, Swift will be too low for Katalyst to safely approach it due to the effects of increasing drag. NASA gave Katalyst less than a year to design and build the satellite. The Swift rescue mission had to launch before the end of June.
“To be honest, no one thought it was going to be possible. No one thought we would get as far as we’ve already gotten today,” Domagal-Goldman said. “And I have to be honest, there are still risks ahead of us, but I’m both deeply thankful and as optimistic as I can be that we’ll meet those challenges because of the people that have worked on it.” (...)
Northrop Grumman’s L-1011 carrier jet will transport the 58-foot-long (18-meter) Pegasus rocket with the Link servicing satellite to a location over the remote equatorial Pacific Ocean near Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The multi-day journey to Kwajalein from the Pegasus integration base in Virginia began Thursday with the L-1011’s departure from Wallops. Launch is scheduled for June 27.
Doing the impossibleIt would normally take several years for a satellite of Link’s complexity to be designed, manufactured, tested, and launched.
So how did NASA, Katalyst, and Northrop Grumman do it in less than a year?They did it by throwing out the playbook. NASA’s normal bureaucratic process for soliciting proposals for new missions can take months or even years.“We didn’t send out a solicitation because we didn’t have time to,” Domagal-Goldman told Ars. “Normally, that’s what we would do, but those solicitations take time for the respondents to respond and for us to review them. Instead, what we did was we looked at who we had on contract already to do technology development, and we asked three teams that were on contract to do a study for what they could do.”
Katalyst was already working on a commercial demonstration mission for its Link servicing platform. Upon its selection by NASA for the Swift rescue mission, Katalyst quickly pivoted that private investment to meet the agency’s need.
In order to do that, the company’s leaders knew they had to accept some additional risk. Katalyst quickly put out orders to suppliers for all the parts required to assemble the Link spacecraft. In some cases, Katalyst found its suppliers couldn’t deliver in time, and they decided to build parts themselves. Engineers also streamlined the Link spacecraft’s test campaign to meet NASA’s deadline. (...)
Link is just the second space mission developed by Katalyst after a technology demonstration launched in 2024 by Atomos Space, a company Katalyst acquired last year.“When we kicked off the program, I think everyone recognized the biggest risk would be that we weren’t ready to launch in time, that Swift would fall faster than we could get up. We have been able to retire that risk over the last few months by building, testing, and getting ready to operate a spacecraft,” Wilson said. “So that I think has retired the bulk of the overarching concern. Now, there is a lot of residual risk in the program. We still have to get the spacecraft on orbit and operate the spacecraft there successfully, and as we’ve all seen before, that’s a very challenging thing to do.”
It also helped that Northrop Grumman had all the parts for the Pegasus XL rocket in storage. The last two Pegasus rockets were originally ordered by Stratolaunch, a company originally owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Stratolaunch gave up the rockets after Allen’s death in 2018, and Northrop was free to sell them to other customers. It sold one to the Space Force in 2021, and the other to Katalyst last year. (...)
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/06/a-bold-satellite-rescue-mission-came-together-in-record-time-but-will-it-work/Media Resources(...) In anticipation of the boost, NASA temporarily suspended Swift science and modified its operations in a way that had never been done in the mission’s lifetime. This enabled controllers to keep the spacecraft in an orientation that minimizes drag effects and extends Swift’s time in orbit. To maximize the boost’s chances of success, Swift’s average altitude needs to be above about 185 miles (about 300 kilometers).
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/swift-boost-mission/swift-boost-media-resources/2) Dzień medialny w Wallops!
Francis Murphy @fxsmurphy 1:20 AM · Jun 18, 2026
Busy day of media coverage at NASA Wallops! 📸 Capturing Northrop Grumman's Stargazer L-1011 plane and the Pegasus XL rocket as they prep for the late June mission to rescue the decaying Swift Observatory. Bonus: Got to watch the USAF Thunderbirds depart Wallops to head to their next airshow in Columbus, OH! ✈️💨#NASAWallops #PegasusXL #SpaceRescue #Thunderbirds #Aviation #SpaceNews
https://twitter.com/fxsmurphy/status/20673869739504518843) Pierwotna data startu: 27.06.2026 ok. 12:09 UTC z odległości 160 km na południowy zachód od Kwajalein (lotnisko wojskowe Bucholz).
L-1011 Tri-Star wejdzie w strefę oczekiwania przed startem na wysokości około 12 km, a następnie na minutę przed startem Stargazer i Pegesus XL polecą na południowy wschód i rozpoczną wznoszenie na wysokość około 12,6 km, gdzie Pegesus XL zostanie odłączony.
Po 7 sekundach miał nastąpić zapłon rakiety, a następnie jej odchylenie.
Zakończenie pracy pierwszego stopnia rakiety zaplanowano w T+01m 19s lotu i pokonaniu dystansu 470 756 km.
Zapłon drugiego stopnia rakiety zaplanowany został w T +01m 35 s lotu, a koniec pracy miał nastąpić w T+ 02m 50 , co miało spowodować pokonanie dystansu 3540 km.
Po oddzieleniu się drugiego stopnia, trzeci stopień Pegesusa i LINK miały kontynuować lot przez ok. 03m 30 s, po czym miał zostać uruchomiony wstępnie trzeci stopień na 1 min , by umieścić satelitę LINK na orbicie o parametrach 355 x 385 km x 20,6 stopnia z nominalną prędkością graniczną 26081,6 km/h / 7244,89 m/s.
W momencie wejścia na orbitę, Obserwatorium Swift miało znajdować się 402 km na północ od Mikronezji, czyli 3033 km za sondą LINK, w odległości 354 km.
Około czterech dni po starcie, LINK firmy Katalyst Space Technologies ma zbliżyć się do Obserwatorium Swift. Oczekuje się, że w ciągu kilku tygodni po starcie LINK przechwyci Obserwatorium Swift i zwiększy jego orbitę, wydłużając tym samym jego okres eksploatacji i możliwości naukowe .
Katalyst Space Technologies jest firmą lotniczo-kosmiczną z siedzibą we Flagstaff w Arizonie, założoną pod koniec 2019.
03.2025 Katalyst Space Technologies przejęła Atomos Space, firmę specjalizującą się w pojazdach do spotkań i transferu orbitalnego.
09.2025 NASA przyznała Katalyst Space Technologies kontrakt na misję ratunkową Swift o wartości 30 milionów dolarów na budowę i rozwój statku kosmicznego zdolnego do połączenia się z Obserwatorium Swift i podniesienia jego orbity.
https://x.com/Dillonshrop06/status/2069178373512085991
Wątek: Swift (Przeczytany 13417 razy)