Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: Right now, Like, as you listen to this, hundreds of
Speaker 2: miles above your head, there is a one point six
Speaker 2: ton national treasure that is just it's slowly falling out
Speaker 2: of the sky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a completely surreal situation to watch unfold.
Speaker 2: It really is. I mean, it's completely deaf to our
Speaker 2: commands right now. Yes, scientific instruments have been purposely blinded,
Speaker 2: and it's just quietly plunging toward this fiery disintegration in
Speaker 2: the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Right And usually you know, when the airspace community discusses
Speaker 3: the end of a satellite's life, we're talking about a
Speaker 3: highly controlled deorbit burn.
Speaker 2: Like pushing it into a graveyard trajectory, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Yeah, a planned retirement. But the situation currently unfolding
Speaker 3: in lower Earth orbit, it's this is a crisis playing
Speaker 3: out in agonizing slow motion.
Speaker 2: Agonizing is the word for it, because we are witnessing
Speaker 2: this ultimate high stakes ticking clock.
Speaker 3: We really are. You've got this multi hundred million dollar
Speaker 3: piece of scientific infrastructure that is effectively drowning in the
Speaker 3: upper atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Wow, drowning. That's a terrifying way to put it.
Speaker 3: Well, it's accurate. I mean, the most complex aspect of
Speaker 3: this entire scenario is the sheer physics of it. Once
Speaker 3: the atmospheric drag crosses a certain threshold, the mathematical reality
Speaker 3: of orbital mechanics just takes over.
Speaker 2: You can't negotiate with gravity, No, you really.
Speaker 3: Can't, and you can't simply hit a pause button to
Speaker 3: figure out your next move.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the actual urgency of this week,
Speaker 2: because this isn't some theoretical problem for next year, definitely
Speaker 2: not starting as early as this Tuesday. So literally right now,
Speaker 2: in June twenty twenty six, and entirely unprecedented one a
Speaker 2: thirty million dollars rescue operation is getting underway.
Speaker 3: It's an incredibly audacious maneuver.
Speaker 2: Honestly, it's wild. A startup called Catalyst Space Technologies is
Speaker 2: launching a robotic life saver to catch this falling satellite
Speaker 2: the Swift observatory before it crosses a very literal point
Speaker 2: of no return.
Speaker 3: And just to put that in perspective, launching a fully
Speaker 3: autonomous machine into the orbital void to perform a high
Speaker 3: speed interception of an uncooperative target. It's an act of
Speaker 3: absolute mechanical acrobatics.
Speaker 2: Right, And we are going to break down for you
Speaker 2: every single mechanical, economic, and orbital factor of this operation.
Speaker 3: Today, because, I mean, nine months ago, the consensus within
Speaker 3: the astrophysics and airspace engineering communities was that this specific
Speaker 3: type of dynamic rescue was virtually impossible, not just hard,
Speaker 3: but actually impossible. Yeah, virtually impossible within the given timeframe.
Speaker 2: So we're going to explore the mechanics of this crisis,
Speaker 2: starting with why a telescope that has been operating flawlessly
Speaker 2: since two thousand and four is suddenly plummeting.
Speaker 3: Right, the physics of the fall itself.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and then we'll examine the highly unorthodox design of
Speaker 2: the rescue robot, which I got to say include some
Speaker 2: engineering choices that seem almost primitive.
Speaker 3: Primitive until you understand the brutal realities of the vacuum
Speaker 3: of space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, we'll get into that. We'll dissect the terrifying
Speaker 2: orbital ballet required to catch a fragile object moving at
Speaker 2: five miles per second.
Speaker 3: Five miles per second, slit that sink in.
Speaker 2: It's unfathomable speed. And finally we'll look at how this
Speaker 2: single desperate gamble might permanently rewrite the rules for humanity's
Speaker 2: entire footprint in space.
Speaker 3: It's a huge paradigm shift.
Speaker 2: But okay, before we get to the rescue, we need
Speaker 2: to understand the fall.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Why is a satellite that has been safely orbiting the
Speaker 2: Earth for over twenty years suddenly dropping like a stone?
Speaker 3: So the primary catalyst here is not a mechanical failure
Speaker 3: aboard Swift itself.
Speaker 2: It's not a broken part.
Speaker 3: No, it hasn't suffered like a catastrophic battery explosion, and
Speaker 3: it hasn't been peppered by micrometeoroids or orbital debried, nothing
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what's pulling it down?
Speaker 3: The culprit is actually ninety three million miles away the
Speaker 3: Sun exactly. Yeah, we are currently experiencing a period of
Speaker 3: exceptionally violent solar activity.
Speaker 2: Because we're at the peak of solar cycle twenty five
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 3: Right, the Sun is erupting with intense solar flares and
Speaker 3: coronal mass ejections, just one after another.
Speaker 2: And I know most people, you know, they understand that
Speaker 2: low Earth orbit isn't perfect vacuum. There is a very
Speaker 2: thin trace atmosphere up there, a very tenuous atmosphere. Yes,
Speaker 2: but what exactly is the mechanism connecting a solar flare
Speaker 2: to a satellite suddenly losing its altitude? Like how does
Speaker 2: a flash of light make a chunk of metal fall?
Speaker 3: It comes down to extreme ultraviolet and X ray radiation. Okay,
Speaker 3: when the Sun releases a massive flare, it blasts the
Speaker 3: Earth with its enormous surge of highly energetic radiation, right,
Speaker 3: and that solar energy slams directly into our upper atmosphere,
Speaker 3: specifically the thermosphere.
Speaker 2: Them is sphere, got it right?
Speaker 3: And when you pump that much thermal energy into a gas,
Speaker 3: the molecules become highly.
Speaker 2: Excited because heat is just movement basically exactly.
Speaker 3: They move faster, they push further apart, and the entire
Speaker 3: atmospheric layer physically expands outward.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so the atmosphere actually swells.
Speaker 3: It puffs up precisely. So picture Swift orbiting at what
Speaker 3: used to be a very comfortable, highly evacuated altitude.
Speaker 2: Just coasting along in the quiet.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But suddenly, because of this solar heating, the slightly
Speaker 3: denser layers of atmospheric gas that normally sit dozens of
Speaker 3: miles below Swift are pushed upward, yes, pushed directly into
Speaker 3: the satellite's orbital path.
Speaker 2: So a spacecraft zooming along at seventeen thousand miles an
Speaker 2: hour is suddenly hitting a much thicker wall of atomic
Speaker 2: oxygen and nitrogen.
Speaker 3: And at orbital velocities, I mean, even a minuscule increase
Speaker 3: in atmospheric density creates a profound amount of aerodynamic drag.
Speaker 2: It's like driving your car into a huge puddle on
Speaker 2: the highway.
Speaker 3: That's a great analogy. The environment around the satellite effectively
Speaker 3: turns into a very thin.
Speaker 2: Quicksand quicksand wow.
Speaker 3: Every single molecule of oxygen that strikes the hull of
Speaker 3: the spacecraft robs it of a tiny, tiny fraction of
Speaker 3: its kinetic energy and speed.
Speaker 2: Is life up there exactly?
Speaker 3: The fundamental rule of orbital mechanics is that your forward
Speaker 3: velocity is the only thing keeping you from falling back
Speaker 3: to Earth.
Speaker 2: Because you're literally in freefall. You're just moving sideways fast
Speaker 2: enough to keep missing the ground.
Speaker 3: Right, you're missing the Earth. But if friction bleeds your speed,
Speaker 3: you lose your altitude. Yeah, gravity begins to win the
Speaker 3: tug of war man.
Speaker 2: So let's quantify that fall because the numbers here they
Speaker 2: dictate this entire rescue timeline.
Speaker 3: They absolutely do.
Speaker 2: If we look at the orbital tracking data, right now,
Speaker 2: Swift has sunk down to an altitude of two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty four miles, which.
Speaker 3: Is roughly three hundred and sixty kilometers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, But the terrifying part is that this isn't
Speaker 2: a linear descent, is it. It's accelerating, right, The descent
Speaker 2: curve is compounding. How does that work?
Speaker 3: Well, As Swift loses altitude and sinks closer to the Earth,
Speaker 3: it enters even thicker layers of the atmosphere because.
Speaker 2: It's getting lower, so the air is denser.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and that increased density creates even more aerodynamic drag.
Speaker 2: Which bleeds its speed even faster.
Speaker 3: Yes, causing it to drop into even thicker air. It
Speaker 3: is a vicious self reinforcing feedback loot of orbital decay.
Speaker 2: Which establishes our hard deadline for this whole catalyst mission.
Speaker 3: The ticking clock, right.
Speaker 2: Because the absolute point of no return for this rescue
Speaker 2: is one hundred and eighty five miles or three hundred kilometers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that invisible line in the sky.
Speaker 2: If Swift drops below that line, the mission is.
Speaker 3: Over, completely over. Below one hundred and eighty five miles,
Speaker 3: the atmospheric drag becomes so severe that even if the
Speaker 3: rescue robot manages to catch Swift.
Speaker 2: The robots on board thrusters won't be strong enough.
Speaker 3: Right. They will not have enough thrust to weight ratio
Speaker 3: to overcome the friction and push the combined mass back
Speaker 3: up into a safe orbit.
Speaker 2: So if they catch it too late, the robot just
Speaker 2: dies with it.
Speaker 3: They would both be dragged down and burn up together.
Speaker 2: Wow. And based on the current accelerating decay models, Swift
Speaker 2: is projected to hit that one hundred and eighty five
Speaker 2: mile death zone by October, which is just a few
Speaker 2: months away. It's basically tomorrow in aerospace terms. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 2: And that October deadline that forced NASA to take some severe,
Speaker 2: arguably desperate measures earlier this year, right, just to slow
Speaker 2: the bleeding yes.
Speaker 3: Back in February, NASA officially turned off all the scientific
Speaker 3: instruments on the Swift Observatory.
Speaker 2: They completely ceased all astronomical observations, which is a huge
Speaker 2: deal for a science mission. And I initially found this
Speaker 2: deeply confusing. I mean, how is sending a software command
Speaker 2: to power down a camera or an X ray detector
Speaker 2: physically slow down the descent of a one point six
Speaker 2: ton metal cylinder.
Speaker 3: It sounds counterintuitive.
Speaker 2: R Yeah, turning off your car radio doesn't make your
Speaker 2: car more aerodynamic, No it doesn't.
Speaker 3: But in space it has everything to do with attitude
Speaker 3: control and thermal management.
Speaker 2: Okay, unpack that for me.
Speaker 3: When the scientific instruments are powered on, the spacecraft has
Speaker 3: to constantly maneuver itself. It has to point those instruments
Speaker 3: at specific targets in deep space.
Speaker 2: Right, It's constantly twisting and turning to look at things exactly.
Speaker 3: Furthermore, the solar panels have to be articulated to face
Speaker 3: the sun to generate the immense amount of power required
Speaker 3: to run those detectors.
Speaker 2: So it's presenting this very large, awkward physical profile to
Speaker 2: the direction of its travel.
Speaker 3: Right, It's like running through water with your arms stretched
Speaker 3: out wide.
Speaker 2: But by powering down all the instruments, NASA eliminated the
Speaker 2: need to generate maximum electricity exactly.
Speaker 3: This allowed the flight controllers to use the spacecraft's reaction
Speaker 3: wheels to pivot the entire observatory into its most aerodynamically
Speaker 3: efficient posture.
Speaker 2: They essentially took the large flat solar panels and turn
Speaker 2: them edge on into the wind of the orbital velocity vector.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they feathered the arrays.
Speaker 2: Feathered them like a diver, tucking in their arms and
Speaker 2: pointing their tost to slip through the water with the
Speaker 2: absolute minimum amount of splash.
Speaker 3: That's the perfect way to visualize it. That aerodynamic tuck
Speaker 3: severely reduced the cross sectional area of the spacecraft that
Speaker 3: is plowing through those atmospheric particles.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't stop the orbital decay.
Speaker 3: No, you can't stop gravity.
Speaker 2: But it drastically reduces the coefficient of drag.
Speaker 3: Right, it buys them precious weeks on the clock. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a maneuver designed purely to stretch the timeline
Speaker 3: out to October, giving this rescue mission a fighting.
Speaker 2: Chance, which forces us to ask the foundational question of
Speaker 2: this entire endeavor, really, which is If Swift is twenty
Speaker 2: two years old, built with early two thousands technology, and
Speaker 2: is currently just floating up there as an inert, powered
Speaker 2: down brick.
Speaker 3: Why are we risking a brand new, thirty million dollars
Speaker 3: spacecraft to save it?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Why not just accept the reality of solar maximum,
Speaker 2: Let it burn up in a glorious streak of fire
Speaker 2: across the night sky, and launch a shiny, modernized replacement
Speaker 2: next year.
Speaker 3: It's a fair question, but the economic and scientific realities
Speaker 3: make a simple replacement impossible. How So, First, from a
Speaker 3: purely budgetary standpoint, NASA does not have hundreds of millions
Speaker 3: of dollars just sitting in discretionary funds to design, build, test,
Speaker 3: and launch a bespoke replacement. Observatory space is expensive. It
Speaker 3: is incredibly expensive, but beyond the money. Even if Congress
Speaker 3: wrote a blank check tomorrow, it takes a decade to
Speaker 3: develop a spacecraft.
Speaker 2: Of this caliber, ten years at least.
Speaker 3: If we lose Swift today, we enter a massive decade
Speaker 3: long dark age in high energy astronomy.
Speaker 2: Wow, let's really analyze that irreplaceable capability we're talking about losing.
Speaker 2: Because Swift is not just a generic telescope staring at
Speaker 2: pretty galaxies. Right, not at all true to its name.
Speaker 2: Its entire architectural philosophy is built around speed. It is
Speaker 2: NASA's designated first responder for the most violent transient events
Speaker 2: in the universe.
Speaker 3: Transient events being the key phrase.
Speaker 2: There, Right, what are we talking about when I say transient?
Speaker 3: We were talking about gamma ray bursts, or the exact
Speaker 3: moment a massive star collapses into a supernova, or two
Speaker 3: neutron stars colliding.
Speaker 2: The biggest explosions in the universe.
Speaker 3: Yes, these events release more energy in a matter of
Speaker 3: seconds than our Sun will emit over its entire ten
Speaker 3: billion year lifespan.
Speaker 2: That's staggering.
Speaker 3: But the initial flash, the burst of high energy radiation
Speaker 3: that contains the pure physics of the event, might only
Speaker 3: last a few milliseconds to a couple of minutes.
Speaker 2: So if you are not looking exactly at the right
Speaker 2: coordinates at the exact millisecond it happens, the flash is
Speaker 2: gone forever exactly. You miss the fingerprint of creation, and
Speaker 2: Swift was engineered to solve that exact problem.
Speaker 3: Right. Its burst alert telescope constantly monitors a massive swath
Speaker 3: of the sky, just waiting the moment it detects a
Speaker 3: spike in high energy photons, The onboard autonomous software instantly
Speaker 3: calculates the coordinates of the burst instantly yes. Then, using
Speaker 3: its heavy reaction wheels, Swift physically slews the entire spacecraft,
Speaker 3: violently pivoting in orbit to point its higher X ray
Speaker 3: and ultraviolet telescopes directly at the source.
Speaker 2: Catching the fading afterclow.
Speaker 3: Catching it right as it happens.
Speaker 2: But the true magic of Swift isn't just that it
Speaker 2: looks at the explosion itself.
Speaker 3: No, it operates as the central nervous system for the
Speaker 3: entire global astronomical community.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate celestial dispatcher.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it is. Within seconds of detecting a
Speaker 3: gamma ray burst, Swift transmits those exact celestial coordinates down
Speaker 3: to Earth through the TDRS relay satellite.
Speaker 2: Network right the Tracking and Dietter Relay satellites.
Speaker 3: And those coordinates are immediately blasted out to ground based
Speaker 3: observatories all over the world.
Speaker 2: Everyone turns their telescopes.
Speaker 3: Everyone, and more importantly to other assets.
Speaker 2: In space, assets like the games Web Space Telescope Yes and.
Speaker 3: The soon to launch Roman Space Telescope Right. These flagship
Speaker 3: observatories are engineering marvels with unprecedented resolution, but they have
Speaker 3: extremely narrow fields.
Speaker 2: Of view because they're designed to look deep, not why exactly.
Speaker 3: They're essentially looking at the universe through a soda.
Speaker 2: Straw, a very expensive soda straw.
Speaker 3: Very expensive. They cannot search the sky for random millisecond flashes.
Speaker 3: They need Swift to act as the wide angle security
Speaker 3: camera that detects the motion, taps them on the shoulder
Speaker 3: and says, look at these exact coordinates right now.
Speaker 2: Point your soda straw over here, exactly. So if Swift
Speaker 2: burns up in the atmosphere this October, Web and Roman
Speaker 2: are fundamentally compromised.
Speaker 3: They lose their trigger mechanism.
Speaker 2: As NASA's Science Mission chief Nikki Fox bluntly stated, if
Speaker 2: Swift re enters, we lose a massive swath of our
Speaker 2: observational capability.
Speaker 3: They are wandering the universe with brinders.
Speaker 2: On Wow, which highlights a critical, often misunderstood concept in
Speaker 2: orbital architecture. Doesn't it the profound value of legacy hardware?
Speaker 3: It's so true on Earth we are conditioned by the
Speaker 3: consumer tech cycle to view twenty year old electronics as
Speaker 3: obsolete garbage.
Speaker 2: Right like a laptop from two thousand and four is
Speaker 2: basically a paper weight exactly.
Speaker 3: But in the realm of astrodynamics and space infrastructure, a
Speaker 3: satellite from two thousand and four that is still operational
Speaker 3: is a marvel of over engineering and endurance.
Speaker 2: It's a load bearing pillar. You don't demolish a twenty
Speaker 2: year old foundation just because it's old, especially when the
Speaker 2: brand new ten billion dollar roof of the James Web
Speaker 2: Space Telescope is resting entirely on top of it.
Speaker 3: You reinforce the pillar.
Speaker 2: You reinforce it, which brings us to the actual mechanics
Speaker 2: of the rescue, the hard part, the incredibly hard part.
Speaker 2: The astrophysics director at NASA, Shan Domigo Goldman, acknowledged that
Speaker 2: a dynamic orbital intercept of this nature was considered outside
Speaker 2: the realm of possibility just a short time ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the physics of matching orbits, approaching an uncooperative target
Speaker 3: and securing it without causing a catastrophic collision, it requires
Speaker 3: a level of autonomous precision that we simply haven't fielded before.
Speaker 2: So enter Catalyst Space Technologies, the startup attempting to do
Speaker 2: the impossible. This week, their CEO ganhie Lee has overseen
Speaker 2: the development of this autonomous rescue robot named Link Link,
Speaker 2: and we need to dissect the physical anatomy of Link
Speaker 2: because its engineering is deeply fascinating. It really is, specifically
Speaker 2: because it abandons complex Sci Fi aesthetics for this brutal
Speaker 2: functional pragmatism.
Speaker 3: To understand how Link operates, you really have to visualize
Speaker 3: its scale first.
Speaker 2: Okay, paint the picture for us.
Speaker 3: The main body of the spacecraft is relatively compact, roughly
Speaker 3: the dimensions of a standard kitchen.
Speaker 2: Refrigerator, Okay, a flying fridge, right.
Speaker 3: And that fridge houses the propellant tanks, the autonomous navigation computers,
Speaker 3: the star trackers, and the communication.
Speaker 2: Erase, the brains and the gas.
Speaker 3: Tank basically yeah. But from that central refrigerator body it
Speaker 3: deploys these massive solar wings spanning forty feet or about
Speaker 3: twelve meters across forty feet.
Speaker 2: That's huge compared to the fridge part.
Speaker 3: It needs to gather a tremendous amount of power for
Speaker 3: the orbital transfer burns.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. But the most striking design choice, however,
Speaker 2: and the one that initially made me highly skeptical of
Speaker 2: this thirty million dollar mission is its robotic arms.
Speaker 3: Ah the grapple mechanism.
Speaker 2: Yes, link has three arms, each extending just over three
Speaker 2: feet or about a meter from the main body right
Speaker 2: and at the end of each arm. There is no sophisticated,
Speaker 2: multi jointed robotic hand. There are no highly dexterous fingers. Instead,
Speaker 2: there are simple, two pronged pinching grippers. They look remarkably
Speaker 2: like the hands of a standard Lego minifigure.
Speaker 3: It's essentially a simple sea clamp.
Speaker 2: Design, a sea clamp. I have to push back on this.
Speaker 2: If you are executing a historic, high stakes space rescue,
Speaker 2: relying on a primitive sea clank feels like an absurd risk.
Speaker 3: I get why you'd think.
Speaker 2: That, right, Why not use a robotic hand with high
Speaker 2: fidelity dexterity to ensure they can delicately navigate around Swift's
Speaker 2: fragile solar.
Speaker 3: Panels Because your instinct to want dexterity is completely logical
Speaker 3: on Earth, but in the vacuum of space, complexity is
Speaker 3: the enemy of reliability.
Speaker 2: Complexity is the enemy.
Speaker 3: Think about a highly articulated robotic hand with dozens of microjoints, tendons.
Speaker 2: And actuators like a human hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, up there, that represents dozens of single points of failure.
Speaker 3: Consider the thermal environment of low Earth orbit. The temperature
Speaker 3: swings exactly when link is in direct sunlight, the surface
Speaker 3: temperature of those arms will spiked over two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty degrees fahrenheit, boiling beyond boiling, and then forty five
Speaker 3: minutes later, when it passes into the Earth's shadow, the
Speaker 3: temperature plummets to minus two hundred and fifty degrees.
Speaker 2: So the metals and joints are constantly expanding and.
Speaker 3: Contracting, violently expanding and contracting. If you have intricate, tight
Speaker 3: tolerance joints in a humanoid robotic hand, that thermal cycling
Speaker 3: will almost certainly cause the mechanism to bind or seize entirely.
Speaker 2: It would just lock up completely.
Speaker 3: Furthermore, in a hard vacuum, you have to worry about
Speaker 3: a phenomenon called vacuum welding or cold welding.
Speaker 2: Cold welding where too metals touch and fuse together.
Speaker 3: Yes, because there is no atmosphere to create an oxidation
Speaker 3: layer on the metal surfaces. If two pieces of similar
Speaker 3: bare metal scrape against each other in the hinges of
Speaker 3: a robotic finger.
Speaker 2: They can't tell their separate pieces anymore exactly.
Speaker 3: Their atoms can literally fail to recognize the boundary between them.
Speaker 3: They fuse into a single solid piece of metal.
Speaker 2: A completely jammed hand exactly.
Speaker 3: So Catalysts engineers opted for the Lego hand seaclamp.
Speaker 2: Keep it simple, stupid. Basically, it requires only a single
Speaker 2: heavily shielded actuator to pinch the two prongs together.
Speaker 3: It is robust, it is thermally resilient, and it provides
Speaker 3: a massive, high torque grip without the frigility of articulated fingers.
Speaker 2: So it's actually a masterpiece of pragmatic mechanical engineering.
Speaker 3: It really is. It's brilliant in its simplicity.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate expression of function over form. I mean,
Speaker 2: visualize this a flying smart fridge with forty foot wings
Speaker 2: and three giant lego hands tasked with catching a spinning,
Speaker 2: multimillion dollar telescope. It sounds like science fiction, but it's happening.
Speaker 2: And getting this bizarre machine into the orbital corridor is
Speaker 2: a story in itself because Catalyst is utilizing a highly
Speaker 2: unorthodox launch method.
Speaker 3: Right, They aren't using a standard rocket.
Speaker 2: They are not rolling a massive rocket out to a
Speaker 2: concrete pad at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Speaker 3: No, the launch architecture is vastly different. Link is being
Speaker 3: launched from an autol on the Marshall Islands located in
Speaker 3: the Central Pacific Ocean. Okay, but it's not lifting off
Speaker 3: from the ground.
Speaker 2: Wait, what do you mean?
Speaker 3: Link is encapsulated inside the firing of a Pegasus XL rocket.
Speaker 3: That entire rocket is then mounted horizontally underneath the belly
Speaker 3: of a heavily modified carrier airplane.
Speaker 2: So an airplane takes off with a rocket strapped to
Speaker 2: its stomach exactly.
Speaker 3: The airplane takes off like a standard commercial flight, climbs
Speaker 3: to an altitude of roughly forty thousand feet over the
Speaker 3: open ocean, and literally drops the rocket, just drops it
Speaker 3: out of the sky, drops it. The Pegasus falls in
Speaker 3: free fall for about five seconds to clear the aircraft
Speaker 3: ignites its first stage solid rocket motor in mid air
Speaker 3: and blasts its way into low Earth orbit.
Speaker 2: That is insane, and that is not merely a party trick.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh not at all. Launching from the belly of
Speaker 3: an aircraft provides an overwhelming strategic and mathematical advantage for
Speaker 3: a rapid response orbital intercept mission.
Speaker 2: How because it seems so complicated.
Speaker 3: Well, if you launch from a static concrete pad in Florida,
Speaker 3: you are geographically bound. You have to wait for the
Speaker 3: rotation of the Earth to carry your launch pad precisely
Speaker 3: under the orbital plane of the target.
Speaker 2: Satellite, So you have to time it perfectly.
Speaker 3: And if you miss that launch window by even a
Speaker 3: few minutes, the orbital.
Speaker 2: Math fails, utterly fails.
Speaker 3: Yes, once you are in space, changing your orbital inclination,
Speaker 3: meaning tilting the angle of your orbit relative to the equator,
Speaker 3: requires a massive prohibitive expenditure of propellant because.
Speaker 2: You're trying to turn while going seventeen thousand miles an hour.
Speaker 3: The physics so shifting your velocity vector sideways at that
Speaker 3: speed is brutal. If Link used all its fuel just
Speaker 3: trying to align its plane with Swift after a ground launch,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't have enough fuel left to actually push Swift
Speaker 3: back up to a higher altitude.
Speaker 2: So the airplane solves the inclination problem before the rocket
Speaker 2: even ignites.
Speaker 3: It allows us to transition from a geographically bound space
Speaker 3: program to a geometry bound space program.
Speaker 2: A geometry bound space program that is a phenomenal paradigm shift.
Speaker 3: It really is. The carrier aircraft operates as a fully
Speaker 3: mobile launch pad. They fly the plane to the exact latitude, longitude,
Speaker 3: and heading required to perfectly match Swift's specific decaying orbital plane.
Speaker 2: So they just line it up in the atmosphere right.
Speaker 3: The Pegasus rocket fires directly into the correct geometric corridor,
Speaker 3: ensuring that Link arrives in orbit with nearly full propellant
Speaker 3: tanks ready for the heavy.
Speaker 2: Lifting, ready to do the actual job exactly. But getting
Speaker 2: Link inserted into the correct orbital plane is merely the amble,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's just the commute.
Speaker 2: The actual rendezvous and docking. The moment those lego hands
Speaker 2: have to make physical contact with the observatory is where
Speaker 2: the tension reaches a terrifying peak.
Speaker 3: The timeline itself illustrates the agonizing precision required here. It
Speaker 3: will take Link an entire month just to execute the
Speaker 3: rendezvous phase.
Speaker 2: Wait a full month, yes, thirty days. Why does it
Speaker 2: take thirty days to catch something? If you launched into
Speaker 2: the correct orbital plane, I mean want to just burn
Speaker 2: the engines and fly straight toward it.
Speaker 3: Because orbital mechanics do not function like atmospheric flight. You
Speaker 3: can't just aim and hit the gas.
Speaker 2: Okay, explain that Link will.
Speaker 3: Be placed into a slightly lower phasing orbit beneath Swift.
Speaker 2: Let's visualize this. Think of it like two race cars
Speaker 2: on a massive circular track. If Swift is in the
Speaker 2: outer lane and Link is in the inner lane, Link
Speaker 2: is naturally going to travel around the track faster because
Speaker 2: the circumference of the inter lane is shorter.
Speaker 3: That is an excellent analogy. Yes, Link uses that lower
Speaker 3: or faster inner lane to gradually catch up to Swiss
Speaker 3: position over the course of.
Speaker 2: Weeks, slowly closing the gap right.
Speaker 3: As it approaches from behind and below. Link will execute
Speaker 3: a series of incredibly precise computer controlled engine burns to
Speaker 3: slowly raise its altitude moving from the inter lane to
Speaker 3: the outer lane.
Speaker 2: And as it moves up to the outer lane, its
Speaker 2: speed naturally decreases to perfectly match Swift speed at the
Speaker 2: exact moment their orbits intersect.
Speaker 3: If the math is perfect, Yes, big gift, very big if.
Speaker 3: But once they are occupying the same space moving at
Speaker 3: identical velocities, the true nightmare of this mission begins.
Speaker 2: The catch.
Speaker 3: The catch because Swift was manufactured in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: It was absolutely never designed to be repaired, serviced, or
Speaker 3: physically grappled by another spacecraft.
Speaker 2: It has no docking ring.
Speaker 3: None.
Speaker 2: It has no structural handles painted with high visibility arrows,
Speaker 2: nothing like that. It is a delicate scientific instrument covered
Speaker 2: in extremely fragile multi layer thermal insulation and highly sensitive
Speaker 2: optical sensors.
Speaker 3: It's basically a giant, fragile glass eye covered in foil.
Speaker 3: Which brings us to the two non negotiable Golden rules
Speaker 3: NASA established when they awarded Catalyst this thirty million dollar
Speaker 3: contract last September.
Speaker 2: Okay, what are the rules?
Speaker 3: Rule number one? Ex get this fast because the aerodynamic
Speaker 3: drag is pulling the target into the death zone.
Speaker 2: The ticking clock to October right.
Speaker 3: Rule number two, under no circumstances are you allowed to
Speaker 3: make the situation worse.
Speaker 2: Don't make things worse. It sounds incredibly simple on Earth, right,
Speaker 2: like just don't drop it. But in space, when dealing
Speaker 2: with kinetic energy, one tiny mistake is lethal.
Speaker 3: Lethal is the correct word. We have to consider the
Speaker 3: relative velocities here. Both Link and Swift are hurtling through
Speaker 3: the thermosphere at five miles per second.
Speaker 2: Five miles per second. That's over seventeen thousand miles an hour.
Speaker 3: Now relative to each other, link's autonomous navigation systems will
Speaker 3: use lied R and optical cameras to bring that speed
Speaker 3: difference down to mere inches per second during the final approach.
Speaker 2: So they're both going insanely fast, but relative to each other,
Speaker 2: they're just creeping along exactly.
Speaker 3: But the total kinetic energy of a one point six
Speaker 3: ton object is immense.
Speaker 2: Right, the mass doesn't disappear.
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't. So if links targeting algorithms miscalculate by
Speaker 3: a fraction of an inch, oh man, if one of
Speaker 3: those anidized aluminum lego hands bumps the side of Swift
Speaker 3: on a glancing angle, instead of securing a firm structural
Speaker 3: hard point like the Marmin clampering.
Speaker 2: It transfers that kinetic energy into rotational momentum.
Speaker 3: Exactly. It would impart a torque to the observatory.
Speaker 2: It would push in.
Speaker 3: Because Swift is fully powered down, its reaction wheels are offline.
Speaker 3: It is zero attitude control authority.
Speaker 2: It can't stabilize itself.
Speaker 3: It cannot fly back against that imparted.
Speaker 2: Spin, so it would start tumbling end over end and.
Speaker 3: If it begins to tumble, the mission instantly ends in failure.
Speaker 3: Why instantly, Because a tumbling cylindrical spacecraft presents a massive,
Speaker 3: constantly shifting cross sectional area to the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: Like we talked about earlier, it wouldn't be aerodynamic anymore exactly.
Speaker 3: The aerodynamic drag would triple or quadruple instantly, the rate
Speaker 3: of orbital decay would accelerate exponentially, and swift would quickly
Speaker 3: plunge into the thicker atmosphere and vaporize.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is what don't make things worse means a
Speaker 2: simple bump condemns the telescope to immediate destruction.
Speaker 3: The stakes are astronomical. There is absolutely zero guarantee of success. Here.
Speaker 2: Catalysts and NASA are literally rolling a thirty million dollar
Speaker 2: pair of dice in the dark, utilizing untested autonomous docking
Speaker 2: algorithms and see clampans. But they're forced to take the
Speaker 2: gamble because the alternative doing nothing guarantees the loss of
Speaker 2: our primary gamma ray sentinel.
Speaker 3: It is the ultimate uncompromising test of autonomous robotic capability.
Speaker 3: There are no joysticks on Earth controlling link during those
Speaker 3: final minutes.
Speaker 2: Really, nobody's flying it no.
Speaker 3: The time delay in communications means links onboard compute must
Speaker 3: analyze the geometry, calculate the vectors, and execute the grapple
Speaker 3: entirely on their own millions of feet away from human intervention.
Speaker 2: It's all up to the robot entirely. But this is
Speaker 2: where the narrative expands beyond the survival of a single observatory.
Speaker 2: Write the bigger picture, Because if Padalyist actually pulls off
Speaker 2: this lego handed miracle, if they manage to gently secure
Speaker 2: Swift and spend two months firing their thrusters to drag
Speaker 2: that one point six ton mass out of the two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty four mile danger zone and up to
Speaker 2: the safe haven orbit of three hundred and seventy three miles,
Speaker 2: this is the goal. It fundamentally shatters the paradigm of
Speaker 2: how humanity operates in space.
Speaker 3: It really does. It rewrites a doctrine that has governed
Speaker 3: aerospace engineering since the launch of Sputnik in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2: Seven, seventy years of history.
Speaker 3: For nearly seventy years, our entire orbital architecture has been
Speaker 3: defined by a throwaway culture.
Speaker 2: Rowaway culture, yeah, think about it.
Speaker 3: Space agencies and private corporations spend one hundredundreds of millions
Speaker 3: of dollars to build exquisite, highly capable machines. They launched
Speaker 3: them into the void, and the moment a single component.
Speaker 2: Fails, a reaction wheel seizes, a coolant valve sticks, or
Speaker 2: the propellant tank runs dry.
Speaker 3: That multimillion dollar asset instantly becomes useless orbital debris.
Speaker 2: We just abandoned them to the dark completely.
Speaker 3: We write off the loss and spend another decade building
Speaker 3: a replacement from scratch.
Speaker 2: But if Link succeeds this week, it violently disrupts that
Speaker 2: economic model.
Speaker 3: It proves that in orbit servicing, repair, and relocation are
Speaker 3: not just whiteboard concepts for a distant future.
Speaker 2: It proves they are viable commercial realities today right now.
Speaker 2: Although you know, to maintain absolute historical accuracy, we should
Speaker 2: note that the United States is not the first nation
Speaker 2: to attempt manipulating an object in orbit.
Speaker 3: No, It's true, the Chinese Fix program executed a somewhat
Speaker 3: similar maneuver roughly four years ago, where one of their
Speaker 3: orbital tugs successfully grappled a defunct dead satellite and boosted
Speaker 3: it higher into a raveyard orbit.
Speaker 2: Right, But that is a critical distinction.
Speaker 3: Though it is pushing a piece of dead, inert debris
Speaker 3: out of a crowded or brill lane is an impressive
Speaker 3: feed of navigation, absolutely, but it is effectively cosmic janitorial.
Speaker 2: Work cleaning up space junk right.
Speaker 3: What Catalyst is attempting with Link is fundamentally different. They
Speaker 3: are attempting to delicately grapple a highly fragile, currently operational
Speaker 3: scientific instrument, specifically to preserve its functionality and return it
Speaker 3: to active duty.
Speaker 2: It's the difference between towing a total car to the
Speaker 2: junkyard and performing open heart surgery on a patient in
Speaker 2: the back of a moving ambulance.
Speaker 3: That is precisely what it is, and establishing this capability
Speaker 3: right now couldn't possibly be more urgent because SWIFT is
Speaker 3: not an isolated anomaly.
Speaker 2: No it's not. It is simply the canary in the
Speaker 2: coal mine exactly. This is the realization that elevates this
Speaker 2: entire situation from an interesting technical challenge into a systemic crisis.
Speaker 3: The solar maximum effects everything.
Speaker 2: Swift is not the only national treasure getting dragged down
Speaker 2: by the expanding thermosphere. The exact same extreme ultraviolet radiation
Speaker 2: is currently pulling down the Hubble Space Telescope.
Speaker 3: Hubble arguably the most famous scientific instrument in human history.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows Hubble.
Speaker 3: It is thirty six years old. Yeah, it revolutionized our
Speaker 3: understanding of astrophysics definitively proving the expansion rate of the
Speaker 3: universe and capturing the first light of ancient galaxies.
Speaker 2: But it's fundamentally subject to the same aerodynamic laws as swift.
Speaker 2: The atmosphere quicksand is rising and Hubble is sinking.
Speaker 3: And the tragic irony of Hubble is its history.
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
Speaker 3: Hubble was specifically designed.
Speaker 2: To be touched, Oh right, the Shuttle missions.
Speaker 3: During the Space Shuttle era, NASA flew five separate servicing
Speaker 3: missions to the telescope. We sent spacewalking astronauts up there
Speaker 3: to manually install corrective optics, replace failing gyroscopes, and upgrade
Speaker 3: its cameras.
Speaker 2: It was built with modular bays and massive yellow handrails
Speaker 2: specifically for humans to grab onto, but that.
Speaker 3: Human capability no longer exists.
Speaker 2: The Space Shuttle fleet was retired over a decade ago.
Speaker 3: Right, And currently there is no crude spacecraft in the
Speaker 3: American inventory, not the SpaceX Crew Dragon, not the Boeing
Speaker 3: starliner that possesses the necessary airlocks, robotic arms, and payload
Speaker 3: capacity to safely transport astronauts up to Hubble specific altitude.
Speaker 2: Not to mention allowing them to execute complex spacewalks to
Speaker 2: repair and boost the observatory and return them safely to Earth.
Speaker 3: So Hubble is entirely stranded.
Speaker 2: It was stranded until the development of autonomous systems like Link.
Speaker 3: Right, this is where it all connects. Catalyst Space Technologies
Speaker 3: is already heavily analyzing a twenty twenty eight rescue architecture.
Speaker 2: For Hubble twenty twenty eight, just two years from now.
Speaker 3: They are designing a next generation, larger robotic servicing vehicle
Speaker 3: iterating directly on the flight data and autonomous algorithms they
Speaker 3: intend to prove this week with Link to execute a
Speaker 3: life extending orbital boost for the space telescope.
Speaker 2: Man if they can successfully save Hubble, an asset that
Speaker 2: represents an incalculable scientific value to humanity, the economic leverage
Speaker 2: is staggering.
Speaker 3: It really is. You are preserving billions of dollars of
Speaker 3: astronomical capability for a fraction of the cost and a
Speaker 3: fraction of the time required to build a successor.
Speaker 2: But The vision of catalyst CEO gonhie Lee extends far
Speaker 2: beyond rescuing aging telescopes in lower orbit.
Speaker 3: He is looking at a roadmap for next year twenty
Speaker 3: twenty seven that scales this autonomous robotic architecture out to
Speaker 3: twenty two thy three hundred.
Speaker 2: Miles geostationary orbit. Yes, that is the realm of the
Speaker 2: absolute leviaphins of the aerospace industry, the massive school bus
Speaker 2: size telecommunications relays, the global weather satellites, the multi billion
Speaker 2: dollar military early warning arrays.
Speaker 3: Gonhi Lee envisions deploying fleets hundreds of these autonomous lego
Speaker 3: handed robots throughout the orbital corridors.
Speaker 2: So we are rapidly moving past the concept of a
Speaker 2: celestial tow truck service.
Speaker 3: Technology unlocks the foundation of a true InOrbit economy.
Speaker 2: An InOrbit economy. What does that actually look like.
Speaker 3: We are talking about deploying robotic tankers to autonomously refuel
Speaker 3: massive communication satellites, extending their profit generating life spans by decades.
Speaker 2: Just pulling up and gassing them up exactly.
Speaker 3: We are talking about in orbit.
Speaker 2: Assembly building things in space.
Speaker 3: Yes, once you have robots capable of delicate, high precision
Speaker 3: manipulation in a vacuum. You no longer have to build
Speaker 3: your entire spacecraft on Earth. You can launch raw materials,
Speaker 3: modular streuts and solar panels and have a team of
Speaker 3: autonomous machines assemble them in orbit. Wow, you can build
Speaker 3: space based solar power farms measuring miles across, that being
Speaker 3: continuous microwave energy back to the terrestrial.
Speaker 2: Grid miles across.
Speaker 3: You can construct massive orbital data centers, utilizing the ambient
Speaker 3: cold of space for cooling and limitless solar energy for power.
Speaker 2: It completely sidesteps the most punishing bottleneck in aerospace engineering,
Speaker 2: doesn't it The faring size of the launch vehicle. Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the tyranny of the firing.
Speaker 2: Right now, if you want to put a telescope in space,
Speaker 2: it has to fold up like complex origami just to
Speaker 2: fit inside the nose cone of a rocket, and it
Speaker 2: has to.
Speaker 3: Be built robustly enough to survive the violent acoustic vibrations
Speaker 3: of the launch.
Speaker 2: But with in orbit assembly, it's like shipping flat pack
Speaker 2: furniture to space exactly ikea in space you send up
Speaker 2: the dense, heavy boxes of parts and the robotic assemblers
Speaker 2: snap it all together in zero.
Speaker 3: Gravity it removes the gravity well as the primary constraint
Speaker 3: on human engineering. If we can maintain the assets we
Speaker 3: already have in orbit and autonomously construct unprecedentedly large structures
Speaker 3: directly in the vacuum, we exponentially multiply humanity's capacity to
Speaker 3: operate in space.
Speaker 2: So bringing all of this profound orbital mechanics and economic
Speaker 2: theory back down to the immediate reality Tuesday's launch right.
Speaker 2: What we are watching this week as that Pegasus rocket
Speaker 2: drops from the belly of a carrier aircraft over the
Speaker 2: Pacific Ocean is not merely a desperate thirty million dollar
Speaker 2: gamble to save a single twenty two year old telescope.
Speaker 3: No, we are watching a stress test for the future
Speaker 3: of orbital infrastructure. The success or failure of link cy
Speaker 3: clamp hands will determine the viability of a sustainable, repairable
Speaker 3: ecosystem in space.
Speaker 2: It is the absolute bleeding edge of humanity's transition from
Speaker 2: a throwaway culture to a civilization capable of persistent orbital industry.
Speaker 2: It really is, and it leaves you with a deeply
Speaker 2: provocative angle to ponder as you watch this mission unfold.
Speaker 3: What's that well?
Speaker 2: For the entire history of the space age, we have
Speaker 2: viewed outer space as a pristine, utterly untouchable void the frontier.
Speaker 2: It has been a silent, harsh frontier where our machines
Speaker 2: are launched to do their work, and inevitably where they
Speaker 2: are left to die alone in the cult It has
Speaker 2: always been a graveyard. But if link works, if we
Speaker 2: successfully deploy autonomous robots to catch falling telescopes, refuel aging satellites,
Speaker 2: and assemble massive solar farms and data centers twenty two
Speaker 2: thousand miles above the Earth, everything changes. At what point
Speaker 2: does outer space cease to be a vast romantic frontier
Speaker 2: and simply become a heavily industrialized suburb of Earth. That
Speaker 2: is a fascinating way to look at it. Think about
Speaker 2: how profoundly that alters our fundamental relationship with the cosmos.
Speaker 2: The next time you walk outside and looked up at
Speaker 2: the night sky, you aren't just looking into an empty void. No,
Speaker 2: you might be looking at the faint, rapidly descending streak
Speaker 2: of a one point six ton national treasure and the
Speaker 2: tiny robotic hands reaching out into the absolute dark to
Speaker 2: catch it.