An Earth-orbiting NASA telescope is slowly falling out of the sky, with a 90% chance of uncontrolled reentry by the end of 2026. To avoid this risk and extend the observatory’s lifespan, NASA has tapped an Arizona-based spaceflight startup to launch a daring rescue mission.
Katalyst Space Technologies, headquartered in Flagstaff, has received a $30 million award from NASA to give the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory an orbital boost. To that end, Katalyst is developing the “LINK” spacecraft, designed to autonomously rendezvous with Swift and shift it into a more stable orbit.
Katalyst has less than eight months to get LINK off the ground and save Swift, with a launch deadline of June 2026. Oh, and according to a company announcement made Wednesday, it plans to launch the mission via a rocket dropped out of a plane. No biggie.
Saving Swift from its slow demise
The Swift observatory launched in 2004 to observe gamma-ray bursts—the most violent explosions in the known universe. Over its two decades in low-Earth orbit, Swift has gradually lost altitude, as all satellites do. But recent spikes in solar activity have increased atmospheric drag on the spacecraft, accelerating its orbital decay to a concerning rate.
As Swift sinks back to Earth, atmospheric drag intensifies. At this rate, the observatory has a 50% chance of uncontrolled reentry by mid-2026 and a 90% chance by the end of next year, according to Katalyst. Though Swift would completely burn up in the atmosphere and pose no threat to people and property on Earth, NASA and Katalyst hope to extend its lifespan.
Pegasus’s heroic comeback
Katalyst has selected Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket as the launch vehicle for this rescue mission. Pegasus is an air-launched rocket, meaning it gets dropped from a carrier aircraft at 40,000 feet (12,000 meters), then freefalls for five seconds before igniting its first-stage rocket motor and ascending to orbit.
Pegasus’s launch cadence has slowed significantly as cheaper, ground-launched rockets have become widely available. The Katalyst mission will be its first flight since 2021. According to the company, “Pegasus is the only system that can meet the orbit, timeline, and budget simultaneously.”
Swift orbits the planet at a 20.6-degree inclination to avoid the South Atlantic Anomaly—a large weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field that exposes satellites to higher levels of radiation. Because of this, a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg would require a huge amount of propellant to reach the right orbital plane for this mission, Kieran Wilson, vice president of technology at Katalyst, told SpaceNews.
Pegasus’s air-launch design overcomes this hurdle. And since it’s a flight-proven vehicle, it’s ready to launch on short notice.
Once Pegasus deploys LINK, the spacecraft will approach Swift with a series of precise maneuvers known as rendezvous proximity operations, according to Katalyst. Because Swift doesn’t have docking ports or grappling fixtures for LINK to grab onto, it will use a custom-built robotic capture mechanism to attach to a feature on the body of the satellite and adjust its orbit.
If the mission succeeds, it won’t just extend the lifespan of a highly valuable research satellite; it will demonstrate a useful new capability for NASA. Being able to execute a rapid response to orbital decay would be a key asset to the agency, helping it better maintain its fleet of spacecraft in low-Earth orbit.
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