A three-armed spacecraft rockets into orbit to rescue a NASA telescope that\u2019s in danger of crashing back to Earth.<\/p>\n
By AFP and The Associated Press<\/p>\n
Published On 3 Jul 20263 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
NASA has launched a robotic mission to try to prevent one of its ageing telescopes from burning up in the atmosphere in a complicated operation expected to last several months.<\/p>\n
Northrop Grumman launched the Link spacecraft \u2013 built by United States-based Katalyst Space Technologies \u2013 from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean on Friday.<\/p>\n
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A Pegasus rocket blasted off from the belly of a modified aircraft putting Link on course to reach and capture NASA\u2019s Swift Observatory in about a month.<\/p>\n
Initially scheduled for Tuesday, the robot\u2019s launch was postponed due to weather, then technical issues. Blast-off happened on Friday at 0836 GMT from an atoll in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
The unprecedented $30m effort involves sending a robot to rescue the Swift space telescope that is falling towards Earth. If successful, the mission could pave the way for giving other satellites a second life.<\/p>\n
Launched in 2004, Swift is sinking faster than ever because of recent solar storms. The $250m telescope studies gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.<\/p>\n
Once it reaches an orbit close to Swift\u2019s, the robot will deploy its solar panels and perform a series of checks.<\/p>\n
It will then have to locate the Swift telescope in the vastness of space, circle around it and dock using three robotic arms \u2013 manoeuvres expected to take several weeks.<\/p>\n
Finally, it will attempt to propel the satellite approximately 300km (186 miles) higher above the Earth, roughly to its initial orbital position. That operation is expected to last at least a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a lot of firsts stacked on top of each other,\u201d Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA\u2019s astrophysics division, told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m just deeply thankful that we\u2019re even giving this a go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A three-armed spacecraft rockets into orbit to rescue a NASA telescope that\u2019s in danger of crashing back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,225196,50,90,3023,416,86,56,54,158,55],"class_list":["post-673096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-marshall-islands","tag-news","tag-science","tag-science-and-technology","tag-space","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}