NASA's Swift Observatory Rescue Plans Halted Due to Spacecraft Issue

Plans to rescue NASA’s Swift Observatory satellite from falling into Earth’s atmosphere are seemingly dead in the water. The agency and Katalyst Space announced yesterday that the Link spacecraft will no longer capture or boost the Swift telescope to a higher altitude due to an ongoing “attitude control issue,” but will instead conduct rendezvous and proximity operations to collect data for future space exploration.

“We knew this was a high-risk, high-reward mission – a first-of-its kind attempt, developed on an unprecedented timeline driven by the Sun’s activity,” said NASA astrophysics director Shawn Domagal-Goldman. “We were all hoping for more science from Swift. But we knew the takeaways from this mission would be worthwhile either way, and we have gained so much through the series of accomplishments up to this point.”

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts. While only planned for a two year mission, it later came to be used as a general-purpose multi-wavelength observatory, but a recent increase in solar activity has pushed its orbit lower. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the mission update that this “is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting.”

Katalyst was awarded a $30 million contract in September last year to carry out plans to boost the Swift telescope back into a higher orbit, which is a lot of money to spend on an ultimately fruitless rescue mission. Katalyst launched the Link spacecraft on July 3rd, but started experiencing its own issues at the end of July. Without additional intervention, NASA now expects Swift to re-enter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year.