Private mission to rescue NASA's aging telescope runs into its own trouble

(AP) — The spacecraft rushing to the rescue of an aging and sinking NASA telescope has run into its own problem. Nearly a month since its launch, a first-of-its-kind commercial satellite built to save NASA's Swift gamma-ray telescope from a fiery reentry is having problems of its own, the agency announced Tuesday. The Link satellite developed by Katalyst Space Technologies "experienced issues with attitude control" over the weekend, NASA said, causing the spacecraft to spin and resulting in sporadic communications.

"Preliminary investigation shows that two of Link's three reaction wheels currently are not operable, and there is some loss of functionality in its cold gas thruster system," NASA said.Read full article Comments Swift will crash back to Earth this fall without help. NASA is paying $30 million for the rescue effort, which was thrown together in under a year.Launched in 2004, Swift is descending faster than expected because of recent solar activity.

It needs a lift as soon as possible in order to continue scanning the universe for some of the biggest explosions, including gamma ray bursts and exploded stars. Scientific observations are on hold until then.Neither Katalyst nor NASA is giving up hope. All of Link's other major subsystems appear to be doing fine, according to the company."The mission remains active and we continue to believe that with these changes, Link has a viable path to rendezvous with Swift," Katalyst said in a statement.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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