A spacecraft called Link was built and launched by Katalyst Space Technologies to rescue NASA’s Swift satellite. It was launched last Friday in a rocket loaded on a plane at a height of roughly 12200 meters. (Very well written lead with a clear answer to the 5 W’s!)

The Swift satellite is a special telescope orbiting around Earth (proper noun should be capitalized) that has three telescopes attached to it. Its main job is mainly to find Gamma-ray bursts, the type of energy released when two stars collide with each other. However, it has done way much more than that. Swift was first launched in 2004, costing NASA $500 million dollars. Now 21 years old, it is slowly falling towards Earth and will burn up in the atomsphere if left unattended. The Link spacecraft is about the size of a refrigerator and weighs around 425 kilograms. It has robotic arms and blasters to grab the Swift satellite and move the two spacecrafts further away from Earth. According to the beliefs of experts, “It is going to perform a challenging and risky rescue as any effort would be useless after October for the Swift spacecraft”.

Link was created in less than a year; however, this mission would normally take years. It will be tested several times over the next few weeks, before finally going to rescue the Swift spacecraft. If all goes well, the Link spacecraft will gradually bring the Swift telescope 600 kilometers higher than its current height, 360 kilometers. Already working 10 times more than expected, the Swift satellite will continue to work for NASA for at least ten more years. For Katalyst Space Technologies, the mission was about more than rescuing just one satellite with the hope of business to that makes future efforts cheaper, safer, and more sustainable.