{"id":525380,"date":"2026-07-04T20:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T20:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/525380\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T20:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T20:24:08","slug":"nasa-launched-an-emergency-mission-to-stop-the-swift-observatory-from-crashing-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/525380\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA launched an emergency mission to stop the Swift Observatory from crashing to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">The Swift Observatory was launched in 2004, but recent solar storms have pushed its orbit lower, and it\u2019s in danger of burning up in Earth\u2019s atmosphere as soon as this year. To try and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/aerospace-defense\/space-startup-katalyst-launches-orbital-rescue-mission-aging-nasa-observatory-2026-07-03\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">stave off its demise<\/a>, NASA has <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/swift-nasa-satellite-rescue-katalyst-a7ddd740ca099587c58865f583c7245a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">enlisted<\/a> Katalyst Space Technologies. The company\u2019s Link spacecraft launched Friday with the goal of intercepting Swift, which has no propulsion system, and <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/swift\/swift-boost-mission\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">boosting its orbit<\/a> back to its original position. Right now, Swift is circling at an altitude of 224 miles, and Link is aiming to raise that by about 150 miles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Using a three-armed spacecraft to lift a satellite 150 miles higher into orbit is challenging enough, but the speed with which Katalyst pulled the mission together makes it even more impressive. NASA required the company to rush the job because Swift would be too low to save by October. $30 million and nine months later, help is on the way for the $500 million Swift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Swift Observatory was launched in 2004, but recent solar storms have pushed its orbit lower, and it\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,43,141,145],"class_list":["post-525380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}