NASA Calls Off Mission To Rescue The Falling Swift Observatory

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter and burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere later this year, after NASA has aborted the mission meant to tug it back up to a higher orbit. NASA has announced that Katalyst Space’s LINK spacecraft will no longer dock with the satellite and boost it to a higher altitude as planned. The agency blamed it on LINK’s ongoing attitude control issue, which started in late July. 

If you’ll recall, NASA reported at the time that the spacecraft was having problems managing its orientation in orbit, causing it to spin helplessly. That led to sporadic communications with the spacecraft. There was also some loss in functionality to LINK’s thruster system. NASA and Katalyst were still optimistic last month that the spacecraft could accomplish its goal, but things have clearly changed since then.

Katalyst had less than a year to design a spacecraft for the Swift Boost mission, which launched in early July. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said it was a “high-risk, high-reward mission” mission from the start. It was a first-of-its-kind attempt, and the team had very little time to try and rescue the Swift telescope, whose orbit is rapidly decaying due to an increase in solar activity in recent years. 

NASA’s SWIFT observatory launched in 2004 to study gamma ray bursts, but astronomers are now using it for several other purposes. The agency has been relying on it to obtain critical information quickly when a sudden cosmic event takes places. This mission was supposed to add a decade or so to its life. Going forward, NASA says it will prioritize finding “new options to react rapidly to cosmic events,” but it will use current missions to help fill the gap for now.

While LINK will no longer tug the Swift observatory to a higher orbit, it will still attempt to rendezvous with it. NASA and Katalyst plan to gather as much data as possible from the rendezvous operations to serve future satellite servicing missions.

“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “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. We are going to learn everything we can from LINK’s rendezvous attempt and put those lessons to work on the missions that follow.”