Rescue mission for ageing Nasa space telescope fails

A mission to ⁠rescue Nasa’s ageing Swift observatory in space was cancelled on Wednesday after the spacecraft that was launched to tug the satellite to a higher orbit suffered irredeemable technical issues in space, the rescue craft’s owner, Katalyst Space, said.

Katalyst’s ‌Link craft was launched in early July to approach the observatory, also known as Swift, some 347km (216 miles) in space, grapple onto it and then tug it to a higher orbit of roughly 600km (373 miles), extending its life by years.

But the Link craft began spinning uncontrollably soon after reaching space. Katalyst engineers ⁠spent weeks trying to regain control of the craft, uploading new positioning control software last week ‌that slowed but did not stop its errant spinning.

“Following continued monitoring and assessment of the Link spacecraft, Katalyst Space and Nasa together ‌have concluded that due to ongoing attitude control issues, the mission will not include ⁠the capture and ⁠boost of Nasa’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory,” Katalyst and Nasa said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

The mission ‌failure means Nasa’s prized US$500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has been studying gamma-ray bursts and other cosmic phenomena since ‌2004, is ‌likely to fall into Earth’s atmosphere naturally and burn up later this year.