NASA aims to save a sinking space telescope with a rendezvous in orbit

(NBC News) NASA plans to launch a mission Tuesday to save one of its workhorse space telescopes.

For more than two decades, the agency's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has been circling Earth studying gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, which are triggered by events like births of black holes and collisions between ultra-dense stars at the ends of their lives.

But Swift is at imminent risk of sinking back into the atmosphere, where it would break apart upon re-entry. NASA's prediction models suggest that the telescope's orbit could drop to an altitude considered critically low — below 185 miles — in October.

"It is a swift observatory that can quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division, said during a news conference on June 17, pausing to emphasize the pun with Swift's name. "So we decided, yeah, we want to go save this one this time because of how special it is."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/nasa-aims-save-sinking-space-230738974.html