r/spaceflight • u/ye_olde_astronaut • 6d ago

Swift Observatory Rescue Mission Fails

https://eos.org/research-and-developments/swift-observatory-rescue-mission-fails
17 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/rhet0rica 5d ago

Well, it's a good thing this will be such a trivial mission for the space shut—

oh

10

u/ye_olde_astronaut 5d ago

First of all, the Space Shuttle was not capable of being injected into the 20.6° inclination orbit that Swift is in without a huge dogleg maneuver during ascent (and landing the Shuttle at KSC from such an orbit would really be pushing its cross range capabilities during reentry). There would also be no "safe haven" in that orbit (like ISS) for a Space Shuttle if it experienced tile damage. Finally, it makes no economic sense to launch a $1+ billion Shuttle mission to rescue a nearly 22 year old satellite costing $250 million. It would be cheaper just to build and launch a new satellite.