NASA is paying $30 million for a 1st-of-its-kind rescue mission to the aging Swift telescope before it falls from space. Is it worth it?

On paper, it seems like the math would be clear. A nearly 22-year-old space telescope, well past its prime, is falling out of space after decades of hunting the biggest explosions in the universe. Rest in peace, right? After all, it would cost NASA $30 million to save the telescope , called the Swift Observatory , which the agency launched in 2004 on a planned two-year mission. Some of us have cars that we've replaced far sooner for much less. And now, higher-than-expected drag on the satellite from Earth's outer atmosphere (caused by solar storms) will pull Swift out of orbit by year's end. So why not accept the inevitable fiery demise of the observatory when it plunges back to Earth? Swift, it turns out, is still worth it, according to NASA. The observatory has spent over two decades as a sort of orbital sentinel that scans the cosmos for gamma-ray bursts , ready to quickly point itself at the short-lived — but insanely powerful — space explosions at a moment's notice. No other off-Earth observatory, not even the famed Hubble Space Telescope or James Webb Space Telescope, can perform such a feat of astronomy. So NASA is launching a rescue mission on June 27, one led by the company Katalyst Space using its new Link spacecraft. …