The commercial spacecraft built to raise the orbit of NASA’s Swift observatory has slowed an uncontrolled spin after a week of thruster burns, and NASA says the mission may still be able to carry out the boost it was designed for. Katalyst Space’s LINK spacecraft was spinning at roughly 9 degrees per second; a series of burns this week brought the rate below 4 degrees per second, NASA said in a blog post on July 31.
LINK is the spacecraft of the Swift Boost Mission, an effort to push the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory into a higher orbit and extend its working life. Swift studies gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, along with other cosmic objects and events. The observatory is nearly 22 years old and its orbit has been decaying; agency models project the spacecraft would fall back to Earth this autumn without a boost, and Swift has cut back science operations to reduce drag, according to LiveScience. Swift’s principal investigator, S. Bradley Cenko of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has described the observatory as a versatile instrument for studying the high-energy universe, LiveScience reported.
LINK launched on July 3 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket air-launched from a modified Lockheed Martin L-1011 aircraft. Katalyst developed the spacecraft in under a year before launch, and crews spent 48 hours working on the rotation problem, LiveScience reported. The spin began after launch. Katalyst has attributed it to electrical power problems that affected two of the spacecraft’s three reaction wheel assemblies, leaving one working, LiveScience reported, citing Katalyst’s mission blog. In a commissioning update on July 28, NASA confirmed the spacecraft was power positive and in communication.
Teams have since evaluated LINK’s functionality and determined there are still potential paths forward for a boost, NASA said. The agency is working closely with Katalyst to consider revised, innovative approaches, and Katalyst is continuing with the thruster-burn approach to restabilize the spacecraft in the coming days. LINK is now expected to approach Swift around the end of August.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency was not giving up on the mission, according to LiveScience. The boost, if it succeeds, could extend Swift’s life by many years and potentially decades; agency models put Swift’s minimum rescue altitude at about 298 kilometers (185 miles), LiveScience reported. LiveScience put the cost of the LINK mission at about $30 million and estimated that replacing Swift at today’s prices would cost roughly $450 million.
What remains open is whether LINK will stabilize fully and whether a revised rendezvous and boost will succeed. NASA has said it will evaluate revised plans to approach and capture Swift once the spacecraft’s attitude is stable and it is healthy enough to continue, and the agency plans to keep publishing updates on stabilization and next steps.
Sources
1. NASA Science, “Efforts Continue to Stabilize LINK Spacecraft for NASA’s Swift Boost”: https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/07/31/efforts-continue-to-stabilize-link-spacecraft-for-nasas-swift-boost
2. LiveScience, “‘We are not giving up yet’: Private mission to rescue NASA’s Swift telescope is spinning out of control, and engineers are racing to fix it”: https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/we-are-not-giving-up-yet-private-mission-to-rescue-nasas-swift-telescope-is-spinning-out-of-control-and-engineers-are-racing-to-fix-it