Above the Pacific Ocean, there is a vast, blue sky that seems empty. But far, far above, there is a satellite that is rapidly falling down. An engineering team called Katyalst is responsible for saving the satellite, Swift.
The Swift satellite, also called the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory,. The satellite has been orbiting in space for 21 years, after being launched on November 20, 2004. Swift was launched using a Delta II launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and Swift has survived 10 times longer than NASA had expected.
When the Swift gets too low in orbit, it will start to burn and will crash down. The building of Swift cost a total of $500 million from NASA. Katalyst is a company whose mission is to make a less costly future by saving satellites. They want to rescue satellites and make sure that they are not treated as trash once they break. They hope to repair satellites and let them be used more than just once. Therefore, Katalyst was assigned this mission to save Swift.
Making a robot that should be able to fly into space and even save a satellite should take years to build. But Katalyst proved that wrong. According to News For Kids, Katalyst built a robot called Link in less than a year. undefined Link was built to be transported to space by the Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. Even though the Swift is 3,241 pounds, Link only weighs 935 pounds. The Link robot has two forms: one is the transport form, and the other is the deployed form. When it is in transport form, it is about the size of a household refrigerator to fit in the spaceship. When it is deployed, it becomes bigger to get a hold of Swift. When deployed, the Link is 20 feet long by 5 feet high.
If this succeeds, Katalyst will be able to save a lot of money for space companies by stopping satellites and space ships from burning up by using robots to save these important machines. This will lead to a much cheaper future for space expeditions.undefined