A private mission to rescue an ailing NASA space telescope may now need a rescue of its own. The LINK spacecraft, built by startup Katalyst Space to boost the orbit of NASA's aging Swift Observatory, is spinning unexpectedly in the weeks after launch — so much so that stabilizing it will likely delay the telescope rescue.

LINK launched July 3 from a mid-air Pegasus XL rocket mounted under a modified L-1011 airliner, less than a year after development began, on a $30 million mission to catch Swift before the nearly 22-year-old telescope falls back to Earth.

The trouble began when electrical power issues affected two of the spacecraft's three reaction control system wheels, leaving only one working. As of Thursday, July 30, engineers had reduced LINK's rotation from nine degrees per second to four, and work to stabilize the spacecraft continues.

The mishap has pushed LINK's expected arrival near Swift — originally about a month after launch — to late August at the earliest. Time is short: models suggest Swift must stay above a minimum rescue altitude of 185 miles (298 kilometers), and the observatory is expected to fall too far for help by autumn.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman struck an optimistic note. "We are not giving up yet," he wrote on X. "This remains a very cool, very low-cost, high-potential, high-reward mission, and another step toward a more autonomous future where missions like this routinely upgrade, repair, service, and boost satellites."

If successful, Katalyst's mission — to refuel and reboost the $450 million observatory — could give Swift many more years, potentially decades, of science. "Swift is NASA's multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos," said S. Bradley Cenko, the telescope's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Sources