Here's how engineers plan to save the satellite sent to save NASA's Swift mission
摘要
工程师正在努力挽救用于救援NASA“雨燕”天文卫星的“Link”号卫星。该卫星在距地200多英里处突然失控，多轴旋转，三个反作用轮中两个失效，冷气推进器也出现故障。Link由Katalyst公司建造运营，获NASA 3000万美元合同，计划对接“雨燕”并提升其轨道。目前团队正通过零星无线电联系排查问题。
One week ago, more than 200 miles above the Earth, a refrigerator-size satellite making its way toward an attempted rescue of NASA's $500 million Swift gamma-ray observatory suddenly spun out of control.
It didn't look good. The spacecraft, named Link, was rotating on multiple axes, rendering it unable to maintain a reliable communications link with the ground and complicating efforts to arrest the spin. Two of the satellite's three reaction wheels, used for pointing, also stopped working. Through sporadic radio contact, engineers discovered a problem with some of the spacecraft's cold gas thrusters used for finer attitude control.
The Link satellite is built, owned, and operated by Katalyst Space Technologies, a satellite servicing startup that won a $30 million contract from NASA to fly up to the Swift observatory, grab onto it, and boost its orbit before succumbing to aerodynamic drag and burning up int he atmosphere.
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