After an attitude-control failure despatched it spinning, LINK will proceed with rendezvous and proximity operations at Swift — simply not the orbit-boosting maneuver the mission was constructed to carry out.
Katalyst House’s LINK spacecraft (left) closes in on NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (proper) on this artist’s idea. LINK was constructed to dock with Swift and lift its orbit, however an attitude-control failure has restricted the spacecraft to a rendezvous with the telescope, with out the increase. Credit score: NASA
NASA announced Aug. 19 that the Katalyst House LINK spacecraft constructed to spice up the growing older Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will nonetheless rendezvous with the telescope however received’t increase its orbit, after an attitude-control failure sidelined LINK throughout on-orbit commissioning.
The Swift Increase Mission was a quick-turnaround rescue try designed to avoid wasting the Swift observatory from an early demise. Because of elevated atmospheric drag from the results of photo voltaic most, NASA predicts the house telescope will reenter Earth’s ambiance later this yr, chopping quick the prolonged run of a spacecraft that has delivered plenty of breakthroughs in understanding gamma-ray bursts — the highest-energy explosions within the universe.
NASA contracted Katalyst House Applied sciences, a startup based mostly in Flagstaff, Arizona, in September 2025 to try the rescue, giving the corporate lower than a yr to go from idea to execution. Katalyst designed and constructed the LINK spacecraft for the specific function of rendezvousing with Swift in orbit, docking with the telescope, and boosting it to a better altitude for a number of extra years of science.
LINK launched July 3 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket however shortly bumped into bother, shedding management of two of its three response wheels during the last weekend of July. Response wheels are spinning flywheels that use angular momentum to let a spacecraft level itself exactly with out burning propellant. Three of them, angled appropriately, can maintain a spacecraft regular on each axis; NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman House Telescope, set to launch Aug. 30, carries six for redundancy. LINK carries solely the minimal three, and shedding two despatched it tumbling at almost 9 levels per second, compromising communications with floor controllers. Katalyst spent the next weeks firing LINK’s electrical propulsion thrusters to gradual the spin, finally taming it to about 1.47 levels per second by early August — however for some time, it was an open query whether or not the mission might proceed in any respect.
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Katalyst uploaded a flight-software repair Aug. 11 that reestablished LINK’s angle management. However at that time, the timeline was even tighter. Swift had decayed to an orbital top of 216 miles (347 kilometers), simply 31 miles (50 km) shy of the purpose the place an orbit-raising mission would develop into far more troublesome. Then got here the Aug. 19 announcement from NASA that the spacecraft would nonetheless try rendezvous and proximity operations — closing in on and flying close to Swift to check the maneuvers any future servicing mission would want — however would make no try to spice up the telescope’s orbit. With out that increase, Swift continues to be anticipated to fulfill a fiery finish earlier than the tip of the yr.
Neither NASA nor Katalyst has stated how LINK’s mission will finish — whether or not the spacecraft will dock with Swift and stay there by way of the telescope’s last days or drift off by itself.
The Swift Increase Mission was framed from the beginning as an extended shot, and NASA’s messaging hasn’t shifted now that it’s fallen quick. “This isn’t the end result we had been working towards, nevertheless it doesn’t change why this mission was price making an attempt,” stated NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman within the Aug. 19 announcement.
“We knew this was a high-risk, high-reward mission — a first-of-its variety try, developed on an unprecedented timeline pushed by the Solar’s exercise,” stated Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division. “We had been all hoping for extra science from Swift. However we knew the takeaways from this mission could be worthwhile both means, and now we have gained a lot by way of the sequence of accomplishments up so far.”
The company plans to lean on its different missions to assist cowl the hole in gamma-ray burst monitoring as soon as the 21-year-old Swift telescope is misplaced, in addition to file away no matter classes LINK’s rendezvous can train us about robotic servicing for missions that observe.
Brooks Mendenhall is a employees author for Astronomy and is predicated in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
