NASA's SWIFT Sat is falling out of its orbit

They call it one of NASA's oldest astronomy missions, but it has only been in orbit 21 years - since 2005 - so compare that to the Hubble Space Telescope that was launched in 1990. 

The 21-year-old spacecraft is falling out of orbit, and NASA officials believe it’s worth saving—for the right price. SWIFT is not a flagship astronomy mission like Hubble or Webb, so there’s no talk of sending astronauts or spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a rescue expedition. 

Hubble was upgraded by five space shuttle missions, and billionaire and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman—now NASA’s administrator—proposed a privately funded mission to service Hubble in 2022, but the agency rejected the idea.

As always, there are tradeoffs involved. NASA doesn't want to spend a lot of money on a rescue mission, so it comes down to "how much is acceptable to spend?" Last September, NASA awarded a company called Katalyst Space Technologies a $30 million contract to rapidly build and launch a commercial satellite to stabilize Swift’s orbit and extend its mission. 

The SWIFT observatory launched in November 2004 on a mission to detect gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the known Universe. It has been a mission that has probably done more than what was expected, and astrophysicists still rely on SWIFT’s multi-wavelength instruments to identify and locate gamma-ray bursts for follow-up observations by other observatories. The low orbit means its not going to be in a stable orbit for a long time, and it's projected to reenter on its own before the end of the year if this Katalyst satellite rescue doesn't quite work out. 

There are a few things you should know about this venture. First, SWIFT was never designed to be captured or reboosted in orbit. Second, this mission is the first time Katalyst will attempt to dock with another satellite in space. And third, NASA gave Katalyst a daunting timetable of just nine months to build, test, and launch the rescue mission before Swift’s altitude falls too low for a safe rendezvous.

“This is really technically ambitious,” said Ghonhee Lee, founder and CEO of Katalyst.

Launch is scheduled for June 1, and there’s little margin for error. By late summer or early fall, Swift will slip below 200 miles (320 kilometers), too low for Katalyst to have confidence in controlling its spacecraft. “It’s a lot of drag with two big spacecraft docking together, ” Lee said. “Originally, we thought we had more time.”

Concept of operations for the SWIFT rescue mission. Credit: Katalyst Space Technologies

Next time you're outside in the daytime, think about the big, dangerously bright yellow orb in the sky. The sun gets a vote on whether this flies or works, too. Solar Cycle 25 is fading away but it still has been throwing solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections our way this year.  The last few days have been particularly (solar) stormy, with Geomagnetic storm conditions of G1 or G2 levels. When those happen, the atmosphere expands higher, which increases drag on satellites and that increases the chances of SWIFT reentering sooner than expected. 

Over the years, we've talked about Space 1.0 vs 2.0 or old vs new Space industry and this is absolutely the new side. It makes this more interesting to keep up with than a "plane old Space 1.0" job. The Ars Technica article talks about lots of aspects of the mission that make interesting reading.