Swift Boost Mission: An opportunity for science and defense
Instead of letting a 22-year-old space telescope fall to Earth, NASA wants to rescue the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory with a robotic spacecraft designed to
Instead of letting a 22-year-old space telescope fall to Earth, NASA wants to rescue the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory with a robotic spacecraft designed to boost the telescope back into higher orbit. Despite everything that US government bodies have faced under the Trump administration, from budget cuts to blocked websites, NASA's still good for innovation. Not only is it aiming to rescue a two-decade-old space-based telescope with an emergency mission designed and developed in about a year, but it will also launch that mission from the belly of an airplane. Packed into a Pegasus XL rocket — the world's only airborne-launched rocket — a robotic spacecraft called LINK is supposed to boost the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory back into its orbit. The Swift Observatory is a "unique telescope that has reinvented itself over the years," wrote Brad Cenko, Swift's Principal Investigator at NASA, in an email to DW. "This mission is a great opportunity for NASA to try something novel, with real positive scientific benefit," said Cenko. As it's the first time this has ever been attempted, the mission may fail. But if NASA doesn't even try to save Swift, the telescope will re-enter Earth's atmosphere — in an uncontrolled way — by the end of this year. Why save the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory? The short answer is that NASA wants to save Swift "for science," said Cenko. But it's also to save money. "While it would certainly be possible to build a new and improved Swift, the cost would be much larger than the cost for the boost, which is $30m (€26m), including the launch.
Swift cost about $250m to build and launch in 2026 dollars," said Cenko. "So, this could be quite a bargain." Swift was designed to study gamma-ray bursts. It was launched in 2004. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was one of a group of telescopes that caught this wave of Gamma-ray bursts are a by-product of powerful explosions in the universe, released for instance when stars explode or celestial objects collide. Those explosions and collisions can create particular chemical elements. And scientists say that by studying gamma rays, they can deduct how certain chemicals form. "[Swift] has been extremely successful in this regard, detecting over 2,000 of these sources all the way out to the edge of the visible universe, and helping confirm that most of the heaviest elements in the periodic table, like the gold and platinum in our jewelry, are forged in these systems," Cenko said. In its more than 20 years of operation, Swift has adapted into an "astrophysics multitool" that now surveys radiation in the visible, ultraviolet, "The universe is an incredibly dynamic place," said Cenko, "somewhere in the cosmos a massive star explodes every second. Hubble takes at least 1-2 days to repoint at a target of interest. Swift routinely conducts follow-up of things that go bump in the night within minutes. It is NASA's first responder." Originally launched into an orbit about 600 kilometers (370 miles) above Earth's surface — higher than the average orbit of the International Space Station — Swift has since lost more than 220 kilometers of altitude.
The BriefWire