Overview
- NASA and Katalyst announced on Aug. 19 that LINK will not attempt to capture and boost the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory because its ongoing attitude-control problems could not be fully corrected.
- LINK began tumbling weeks after its July 3 launch when two of three reaction wheels failed and parts of its cold-gas thruster system lost function, producing spin rates near 9 degrees per second that teams reduced but never fully cured.
- The rescue was a $30 million, rapid-build effort: Katalyst built LINK in roughly nine months and air-launched it on a Pegasus XL to try to raise Swift to a safer orbit.
- With capture canceled, LINK will perform rendezvous and proximity demonstrations to collect engineering data that will inform future on-orbit servicing missions and techniques.
- Swift’s instruments were powered down earlier in 2026 to slow its descent, solar-driven atmospheric heating accelerated its orbital decay, and the telescope is now expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere later in 2026, creating a gap in rapid-response gamma‑ray burst observations and raising questions about future boost options for Hubble.