News broke late today, Eastern, that the Link satellite sent to rescue the Swift satellite from burning up on reentry is in dire conditions itself. Two of Link’s three reaction wheels currently aren't working.
The Link satellite developed by Katalyst Space Technologies “experienced issues with attitude control” over the weekend, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications.
“Preliminary investigation shows that two of Link’s three reaction wheels currently are not operable, and there is some loss of functionality in its cold gas thruster system,” NASA said.
The Link mission was Launched on July 3 of this year on its "one of a kind" mission to grab a satellite that's nearing end of life and boost it back up to a higher elevation in its orbit. It was launched on the last flight of the Northrop Grumman Pegasus launch vehicle over the Pacific, closely approached Swift and started checkouts to proceed.
Over this weekend, the Link satellite “experienced issues with attitude control”, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications. Some additional control has been implemented but the spinning hasn't been eliminated.
Reaction wheels work by spinning in orthogonal orientations on the spacecraft, which transfers momentum to the craft allowing the wheels to change and control the position (attitude), of spacecraft in orbit. They are standard components on many satellites. In addition to the reaction wheels Link also has several cold gas thrusters used for finer control, particularly as it nears the Swift gamma ray observatory.
The electric thrusters are one of the most critical elements of the rescue mission. They are used for orbit raising to allow Link to rendezvous with the Swift satellite some 200 miles above Earth. Once Link attaches itself to Swift with a set of three robotic arms, the electric thrusters will turn on again to raise Swift’s orbit and save it from destruction. Katalyst is now calling upon the electric thrusters to stabilize the Link spacecraft’s attitude, something they were not intended to do.
Over the course of the next few days, the team will be working to control the spin using the electric thrusters. After reestablishing stable attitude and further investigating spacecraft status, Katalyst plans to update Link's guidance, navigation, and control to accommodate the spacecraft’s new configuration.
Concept of operations for the SWIFT rescue mission. Credit: Katalyst Space Technologies
Well... poop. 2 out of 3? For a known required item? What, they sourced them from Temu?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, how do 2 reaction wheels go bad? Someone cutting costs? Makes me wonder who the manufacturer of said wheels is and how far the colonoscopy is going to go before the faults are found. And what other space-rated equipment has the company's product installed.
This could be very bad. Like finding the supplier of parts to Boeing and Airbus is selling less-than-great parts bad.
Something I left out of the post, but probably shouldn't have is what they said back when I was first reading and posting about this.
DeleteNo matter the outcome of the Swift rescue attempt, NASA officials said last month they were already pleased with the results. “From a programmatics standpoint, I consider this a success already, just from the fact that we’re even going to try this,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division.
So "all you gotta do" for the program to be a success is put something in orbit, whether it works or not? I think it was one of the comments on Ars that said, this only knocks the chance of a successful mission down from 15 to 10%.
The coffee had to hit before I realized this is the opposite of what Yoda told Luke. "There is no Do, there is only Try, or Try not".
DeleteFile under, Everyone wants to be Elon
DeleteSpaceX is famous for saying 'we've learned so much', even from failure.
It seems S D-G at NASA has jumped onboard with that.
They just should have hired Space X to handle it.
DeleteThey're track record beats everyone else.