A rescue spacecraft is speeding toward a NASA telescope to prevent it from falling into Earth's atmosphere.
The first-of-its-kind mission launched at 5:09 a.m. EDT (0909 GMT) Thursday (July 2) from the Marshall Islands, carrying a robot-arm spacecraft named Link into the sky aboard a modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 airliner. In midair, a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket launched Link into orbit, where it will eventually rendezvous with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a gamma-ray telescope that has been slowly falling toward Earth and headed for an untimely demise.
Link was developed by private company Katalyst Space for $30 million. Katalyst's goal is to meet up with the falling Swift Observatory, which launched in 2004, and pull it to a higher orbit, using Link's robotic arms and thrusters. Swift is still scientifically useful but is rapidly losing altitude due to the natural drag of Earth's atmosphere. Without help, Swift will likely meet its demise...
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