An attempt to save NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory telescope before it burns up in the atmosphere successfully launched to orbit on Friday.
NASA is in a race against time before the friction of air pulls Swift, a 1.6-ton spacecraft, down to its destruction within a few months.
A refrigerator-size rescue spacecraft called Link will try to grab Swift and push it to a higher orbit.
“We have a really good start to the mission,” said Ghonhee Lee, chief executive of Katalyst Space Technologies of Flagstaff, Ariz., a small company that built Link and is now operating the spacecraft from its command center in Broomfield, Colo.
If Katalyst succeeds, Swift will be able to continue its observations of gamma-ray bursts — flashes of high-energy light are emitted by some of the most violent explosions in the universe, such as from the collisions of stars.
Link finally headed to space after three unsuccessful launch attempts. Two were called off because of bad weather, and a third was stymied by a technical problem.
A converted Lockheed L-1011 jetliner took off from Kwajalein Atoll, one of the Marshall Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with a winged rocket known as the Pegasus XL from the company Northrop Grumman mounted beneath its fuselage. Link was housed in the nose cone of the rocket.
At an altitude of 40,000 feet, the rocket was dropped from the airplane at 4:36 a.m. Eastern time. (At Kwajalein, it was 8:36 p.m.) The three stages of the Pegasus rocket ignited in succession and pushed Link upward.
“Pegasus performed phenomenally,” Mr. Lee said. “We were put, almost on the dot, the exact orbit we were going for.”
Within half an hour, mission controllers at Katalyst heard the first snippets of communications from Link, providing proof it was up and running. “Our team definitely cheered after that,” Mr. Lee said.
The solar arrays were deployed. Faster channels of communication started flowing. The controllers started the process of checking out the spacecraft’s systems, including firing its thrusters for the first time as soon as Saturday.
“If we’re in good shape tomorrow for the Fourth of July, it should be a great way to celebrate the holiday,” Mr. Lee said. “Might have to pop a bottle of champagne.”
The commissioning process is expected to take about a week.
The spacecraft will then approach Swift and could grab it in about a month and a half.
Once attached, Link will gradually propel Swift upward for two months before letting it go 100 miles higher. That will be enough of a boost for it to remain in orbit for another decade.
Swift, launched in 2004, has far outlived its original planned lifetime of just two years. Over time, the friction of wisps of air against the telescope, which does not have any thrusters, has slowly pulled its orbit downward. The pace of falling sped up at the end of 2024, when the peak of the sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle was stronger than predicted. When the sun is more active, it shoots out more intense solar flares that heat the Earth’s atmosphere and increase the drag on satellites like Swift.
NASA realized that Swift was probably going to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere this year unless the space telescope could be nudged back into a higher orbit. The space agency awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to do just that.
NASA officials described the Swift rescue as a high-risk, high-reward undertaking worth trying because Swift was still in working condition, and a replacement, if one were to be built, would take years and cost far more.