&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "NASA's falling telescope and its saviour spacecraft captured behind each other - Video")
The Swift Observatory and NASA's LINK spacecraft, sent to save it, have been captured moving in space, revealing an occurrence scientists had been waiting for with bated breath. LINK was launched into low-Earth orbit in July this year to save the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. This telescope has been watching the most powerful explosions - gamma-ray bursts - in space for nearly 22 years. But now it is dragging down as its orbit has started decaying. Instead of letting a perfectly good observatory crash onto Earth, NASA decided to save it.
The space agency had earlier said that the chances of the telescope crashing by June 2026 stood at 50 per cent, which hasn't happened. There is a 90 per cent probability of it happening before 2027. The commercial robotic repair vehicle built by Katalyst Space is supposed to grab the telescope and move it higher. If it fails, Swift could crash later this year, putting on a fiery display.
Problems with LINK spacecraft
But LINK has been sent to save the day. After being launched on July 3, LINK has been facing issues. Two of LINK’s three reaction wheels have failed, and it has been spinning uncontrollably, causing the communication to break. NASA uploaded a flight software update to fix the issue and said on August 10 that the “new attitude control algorithms are designed to maintain LINK’s stability using the spacecraft’s remaining actuators.”
Watch LINK and Swift in same orbit
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Things seem to be fine, as seen in a video captured by amateur astronomers in Puerto Rico with the Sociedad de Astronomía del Caribe. A video shows LINK and Swift in the same, or probably a similar, trajectory, with LINK about a minute ahead of Swift. While there is still hope to salvage the observatory, if it drops below roughly 300 km, then it would be impossible to save it. This is expected to happen in October.
