Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 1.2% (8 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 4.6% (30 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 12.3% (80 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 3.7% (24 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 4.6% (30 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 12.2% (79 hits)
• Framing Effect - 6.8% (44 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 3.5% (23 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 14% (91 hits)
• Optimism Bias - 30.3% (197 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 3.4% (22 hits)

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NASA launches historic rescue mission to save falling telescope

Now this is fascinating. Today NASA launched an historic rescue mission to save an aging telescope from falling toward Earth. NASA says the Swift Observatory is falling faster than expected because because of solar activity.

So for the first time the agency is hoping a spacecraft with three robotic arms will move the telescope to a safe altitude.

CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood joins us now to walk us through this robotic rescue.

Bill, happy Friday to you. We haven't spoken about something like this before.

It sounds very cool.

Please imagine that our viewers, instead of being regular schmangulars, are actually really sharp scientist people.

Describe how this mission is supposed to unfold.

>> Yeah, you know it's really interesting like you say they're going to try to latch onto this satellite that's slowly falling out of orbit and boost it back up to a higher altitude which will let it continue operating for an extra 10 years or so while at the same time demonstrating a new technology that could be used down the road to refuel aging satellites, boost them into different orbits, things like that instead of just writing a mission off, you know, at the end of its design life.

So very challenging, very difficult to do this sort of thing but they're off to a good start.

The launch went well. The solar arrays deployed as expected and they're going to begin checking out the satellite over the next few weeks and then they'll start the rendezvous with the Swift Observatory, try to latch on and boost it up. It's going to be fun to follow.

>> I was just that was my next question.

Are we going to get a live feed of this? Am I going to be able to watch in real time?

And I understand it's being described as a low cost but high risk gamble.

So fill us in on some of those details.

>> Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about this is the the company Catalyst Space that put this spacecraft together did it in about nine months from the from the awarding of a contract to today. That's that is really fast track in the space business.

Complex spacecraft can take years and years to build. This was done in 9 months, and they did it for $30 million and that included the cost of the launch.

That is bargain basement in this in the space world. And if they can pull it off, it's going to be quite an impressive achievement.

Now, there are some big ifs here. I mean, this is difficult stuff to do. They've got to autonomously rendezvous with this satellite, you know, lock on to it with those robot arms, fire these ion thrusters to slowly raise the orbit. All of that's got to go off pretty much without a hitch to make this happen. But so far, so good.

>> So just in our last few seconds then, what is the worst that can happen if the mission fails? Could the satellite fall to Earth, perhaps hit some of us?

>> It will absolutely fall back to Earth.

There's no question about that. If you don't boost this altitude, it's going to reenter probably before the end of the year.

But this is not a large satellite. It's not like the Hubble Space Telescope or something. It would virtually burn up in the atmosphere.

So we don't have to worry about debris.

Yeah, this is just a really cool mission cuz you get extra science out of it and demonstrate this technology, which could be really useful down the road.

>> All right, Bill. Thank you for that. We will be plugged into this live feed as soon as it begins. Thanks for making us all feel a little smarter.