Solar storms puffed up Earth’s upper atmosphere enough to drag a $500 million NASA space telescope toward destruction, so engineers built a $30 million robotic rescuer in less than a year and launched it to grab the telescope before it burns up.

The Sun has been so active lately that it puffed up the top of Earth’s atmosphere and began dragging a NASA space telescope down toward a fiery reentry. Rather than let it burn, NASA hired a company to build a robotic rescuer in under a year, and this week that spacecraft launched to chase the [...] The post Solar storms puffed up Earth’s upper atmosphere enough to drag a $500 million NASA space telescope toward destruction, so engineers built a $30 million robotic rescuer in less than a year an