The $30 million mission to rescue the Swift space telescope failed, and Swift is still falling

A privately built spacecraft that NASA paid $30 million to lift the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory out of a decaying orbit has burned up in the atmosphere without ever touching the telescope. The Katalyst Space Technologies craft, named LINK, reentered in late September, and the observatory it was meant to save is still descending toward its own fiery end.

The outcome closes the first commercial attempt to physically reboost a NASA science satellite. It also leaves Swift, a 22-year-old gamma-ray burst hunter that cost $364 million to build, on a clock measured in weeks rather than years.

How a $30 million rescue was assembled in a year

NASA signed the contract with Katalyst in September 2025, and SpacePolicyOnline put the value at $30 million for what the agency described as an expedited effort. Swift, launched in November 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts across visible, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma-ray light, was dropping faster than expected because of intense solar activity that swelled the upper atmosphere and increased drag. Without intervention, NASA said, the observatory was going to reenter the atmosphere by the end of 2026.

LINK lifted off on July 3, 2026, aboard a Pegasus XL rocket carried from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The plan was for the spacecraft to rendezvous with Swift, grab it with a three-armed robotic system and push it back to a higher orbit before it dropped below roughly 185 miles, or 300 kilometers, an altitude under which NASA said orbit-raising becomes increasingly difficult.

A stuck valve, a failed switch and two lost reaction wheels

The trouble started within weeks. Katalyst’s Kieran Wilson described the root cause as “an unresponsive RCS valve, causing the spacecraft to spin up,” adding that “downstream of that was another power circuit switch failure.” The Associated Press, in a story carried by ABC News, reported that LINK lost two of its three reaction wheels, the spinning devices that steer a spacecraft without fuel.

Engineers did not give up at first. On August 11, NASA reported that Katalyst had uploaded a software update that restored attitude control by using the actuators that remained, and that LINK could continue its approach toward Swift, which was then at about 216 miles. Eight days later the assessment changed. In its August 19 update, NASA said LINK would not capture or boost the telescope because of continuing attitude-control problems, though it would still try rendezvous and proximity operations to demonstrate servicing. NASA’s lessons-learned page adds that LINK also suffered intermittent communications losses after reaching orbit, that the mission was scaled back from a physical boost to technology demonstrations, and that NASA’s own involvement concluded on September 3.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman conceded in that release that the result was not the outcome NASA had been working toward, but said it did not change why the mission was worth attempting. SpacePolicyOnline framed the same view in its own headline, that the rescue may not have succeeded but leaves no regrets, since Swift was expected to reenter without any help.

Reentry on September 24 and what Swift has left

SpacePolicyOnline reported that LINK’s actual reentry occurred September 24 at 1438 UTC, while the AP dated it a day later, September 25. The AP said engineers had still managed to steer LINK to within about 7 to 9 miles of Swift and tested the robotic arm system before fuel depletion ended any chance of a capture. Katalyst chief executive Ghonhee Lee told the AP that from the beginning the company knew this was an “ambitious mission on an aggressive timeline,” and said Katalyst would apply the lessons to future satellite-recovery work.

NASA’s astrophysics director, Shawn Domagal-Goldman, made a similar case in the agency’s lessons-learned summary of the mission, saying that without intervention Swift was going to reenter by year’s end and stressing the value of advancing spacecraft servicing technology. The AP quoted him as calling the attempt valuable practice that pushed teams to race the clock as never before.

Swift itself is a different story from the failed rescuer. The observatory suspended most science operations in February 2026 to preserve altitude, and NASA’s Swift news page shows it resumed two of its three science instruments on August 28 after the boost mission collapsed. That partial restart buys some data but no altitude. The Swift team had earlier adopted an operating approach that reduced atmospheric drag and slowed the decay, according to NASA’s August 11 update but did not change the trajectory enough to avoid reentry. The AP expects the telescope to come down in early November, while NASA has publicly said only that reentry will occur by the end of 2026. Which of those two dates holds depends on how quickly solar activity keeps dragging on a spacecraft that no one now plans to lift.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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