Overview
- Mission controllers restarted Swift's X-ray Telescope (XRT) and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) on Aug. 26 and have resumed science while the Burst Alert Telescope remains offline pending restoration.
- Katalyst's LINK developed attitude-control failures in late July that left two reaction wheels inoperable, impaired its cold-gas thrusters, caused spins and communications disruptions, and led NASA and Katalyst to announce on Aug. 19 that LINK would no longer attempt capture and boost.
- Swift has no onboard propulsion to raise its orbit, so teams used a low-drag configuration earlier this year to slow decay but now expect the observatory to fall below about 185 miles (300 km) within approximately one to two months and likely reenter later this year without intervention.
- LINK will pivot to rendezvous and proximity demonstrations to collect engineering data on in-space servicing techniques that could inform future commercial rescue attempts and highlight risks of rapid-build missions.
- Launched in 2004 for a two-year gamma-ray burst mission, Swift has run for more than two decades as a fast-response multiwavelength observatory, and its probable loss would reduce rapid-alert capacity for transient events and raise policy and technical questions about future satellite-boosting efforts.