NASA Abandons $30M Rescue of Swift Telescope, LINK Still Alive

NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies said on August 19 that LINK will not attempt to capture and boost the falling Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The rescue spacecraft was built to grab the observatory and lift it to a higher orbit. Ars Technica reports LINK is still alive, and Katalyst says it will make the most of its remaining capacity.

The contract was worth $30 million and was awarded in 2025, less than a year before launch. NASA wanted the boost done this summer, before Swift re-enters. LINK launched July 3 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket.

What went wrong

Problems showed up early. In a July 15 blog post, NASA said Katalyst engineers had "addressed early communications and attitude control issues," according to NBC News. That fix did not hold. On July 28, NASA said LINK's attitude control systems had malfunctioned. The spacecraft was spinning, and its communications were sporadic. LINK was rotating at about 9 degrees per second.

Ars Technica reports that two of the satellite's three reaction wheels stopped working. There were also issues with cold gas thrusters used for finer pointing. That left three low-impulse plasma thrusters as the only means of regaining control as LINK zipped around Earth at nearly 5 miles per second. Mission managers fired the thrusters to slow the spin this month, but the underlying attitude control issues persisted.

Katalyst has not said what caused the failures. The company said in a LinkedIn post that it and NASA agreed the mission "will not include the capture and boost of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory."

"We took on this high-risk, high-reward challenge and are proud of the milestones we reached along the way," said Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee in that post. "We have already learned a tremendous amount, and now our job is to turn those lessons into something durable, building a repeatable playbook to inform future rendezvous and proximity operations and satellite servicing."

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman acknowledged the outcome is not what was hoped for, "but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting." In a statement he added: "The team moved with extraordinary speed to give Swift a chance to carry out more science while advancing capabilities America will need for satellite servicing in the future."

Why Swift is falling

Swift launched in 2004 with instruments to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. It was designed for a two-year mission and has operated for more than 20 years. Ars Technica puts the observatory's value at about $500 million.

The problem started in 2024, during a period of intense solar activity. All satellites in low Earth orbit slowly lose altitude because of atmospheric drag. When the sun's activity ramps up, it heats Earth's atmosphere, increasing drag and causing orbits to decay precipitously. Swift has no thrusters of its own to maintain its orbit, so a rescue like LINK was the only option. That is why the failure matters beyond one spacecraft.

Swift had already paused operations in advance of the rescue attempt. Scientific American notes that the doomed observatory will leave a gap in astronomers' observations of the high-energy cosmos that is unlikely to be patched anytime soon. Swift's combination of multi-wavelength instruments and agile pointing lets it locate gamma-ray bursts for follow-up by other observatories.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division, which oversees Swift, said in a statement: "We were all hoping for more science from Swift. But we knew the takeaways from this mission would be worthwhile either way." He called the effort "a first-of-its kind attempt, developed on an unprecedented timeline driven by the Sun's activity."

A rushed schedule

NASA gave Katalyst nine months to design, build and launch LINK. Ars Technica notes that it usually takes several years to ready a first-of-its-kind satellite for launch. The timeline forced hard trade-offs, with the schedule driving engineers to tolerate technical risks they might not otherwise accept. Katalyst is one of several US companies working on satellite servicing, where rendezvous sensors and robotic arms are essential technologies for future missions that could refuel, repair or upgrade satellites.

Katalyst is not abandoning LINK. Ars Technica reports the company will still try to approach and rendezvous with Swift to conduct technology demonstrations for future flights. The spacecraft may get near enough to Swift for a demonstration of its close-in navigation system. "While the mission will not have the ending we originally intended, NASA and Katalyst are assessing what milestones remain ahead," the company said in a statement.

Isaacman framed the decision as a calculated bet. "NASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did," he said. "We are going to learn everything we can from LINK's rendezvous attempt and put those lessons to work on the missions that follow."

Those lessons arrive as NASA's ability to build and operate spacecraft is under strain elsewhere. Separately, NPR reported on September 15 that seven current and former NASA scientists and engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center said relocations over the past 10 months had cost them specialized workspaces, employees and expensive machines. NASA's management said the moves were aimed at reducing costs and eliminating "waste and redundancies." One engineer said a radio communications lab lost almost all its equipment. Another said work on the DAVINCI Venus spacecraft was delayed in August for lack of a lab.

For now, Swift's fate is settled. The observatory, which has far outlived its original design, is expected to plunge into Earth's atmosphere and break apart later this year. LINK, which failed before it could truly begin, will spend its remaining life testing the technologies that might one day save a different satellite.