NASA's race against time to rescue a falling satellite
A valuable NASA satellite observatory is falling to Earth faster than scientists expected. It’s called the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, or “Swift” for short, and it can respond to celestial events much faster than its sky-gazing counterparts. To save Swift and test out a first-of-its-kind technology, NASA partnered with an Arizona-based startup to launch a refrigerator-sized robot, aptly named Link, into lower Earth orbit. That’s on its way right now to meet up with Swift to give it a boost.
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Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
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A valuable NASA satellite observatory is falling to Earth faster than scientists expected. It’s called the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, or “Swift” for short, and it can respond to celestial events much faster than its sky-gazing counterparts. To save Swift and test out a first-of-its-kind technology, NASA partnered with an Arizona-based startup to launch a refrigerator-sized robot, aptly named Link, into lower Earth orbit. That’s on its way right now to meet up with Swift to give it a boost.
Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Interested in more science in the news? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.
Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. It includes perks like bonus episodes, early access, archive access, curated playlists and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
2026-07-08
11 min
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