NASA launched a mission on Friday, local time, to try to prevent one of its aging telescopes from burning up in the atmosphere, a complicated operation expected to last months.

In short:

NASA has launched a robotic mission to try to prevent one of its aging telescopes from burning up in the atmosphere.

The unprecedented effort involves sending a robot to rescue the Swift space telescope that is currently falling towards Earth.

The robot’s launch was postponed earlier this week due to weather and then technical issues.