NASA analysts and engineers have been closely tracking the agency’s sinking Neil Gehrel’s Swift Observatory as part of a fast-paced plan to raise it to a higher orbit.
Teams have been generating models to forecast the spacecraft’s altitude in the coming weeks and months, as Katalyst Space readies its LINK robotic servicing satellite to launch and rendezvous for the lift maneuver.
“These predictions evolve over time, based on space weather forecasts and other factors like Swift’s current height and orientation,” said Michael Shoemaker, deputy flight dynamics lead in SSMO (Space Science Missions Operations) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s also an iterative process with members of Swift’s operations team. They determine new ways to point the spacecraft to reduce drag, and we do some new computations to see how much extra time that buys them.”
All spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience drag caused by our planet’s atmosphere, which solar storms can magnify. Many satellites, like Swift, don’t have propulsion systems to maintain their orbits, so the drag gradually reduces their altitudes.
Shoemaker and his colleagues create annual predictions for dozens of spacecraft in this situation, some that are still active and others that have been decommissioned.
They use orbital data from the U.S. Space Force, solar activity research from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, and operational details from each satellite team.
After most models forecast that a mission will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere within two ye …