Partners, NASA Ready for June Launch of Swift Boost Mission

VIDEO NASA is on a mission to lift its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory along with partners Katalyst Space and Northrop Grumman. Watch to get a sneak peek. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katalyst Space/Northrop Grumman A mission to raise the orbit of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. A robotic servicing satellite called LINK, built by Katalyst Space, will blast into orbit on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket . LINK will rendezvous with, grapple, and slowly raise Swift’s altitude over several months, preventing it from re-entering Earth’s atmosphere later this year. “Swift is NASA’s multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos,” said S. Bradley Cenko, principal investigator, Swift , NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It observes the sky using a wide range of light and rapidly points at short-lived outbursts, alerting other facilities in space and on the ground to help coordinate follow-up observations. …