Swift Telescope’s Final Descent | Chattanooga News

NASA’s aging Swift space telescope, a cosmic firewatcher for over 20 years, is set to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year after its last-ditch rescue mission failed. A private company, Katalyst Space Technologies, was tasked with capturing and boosting Swift into a safer orbit using their Link spacecraft — backed by NASA’s $30 million bet. But just weeks after launch, Link spiraled out of control, unable to stabilize enough for the critical capture. Though NASA and Katalyst learned valuable lessons from the high-risk experiment, the mission’s collapse leaves Swift’s fiery demise inevitable — and casts doubt on future rescue attempts, including one potentially planned for the 36-year-old Hubble Telescope. Listen in comfort:Get a discount on a Soli Pillow: http://solipillow.com/discount/dnn. Advertise on DNN:[email protected] This is an automated, high-level news summary based on public reporting.Report issues to [email protected]. View sources & latest updates:https://sources.thednn.ai/f6cf1ac63e13b4e3