Daring rescue mission launches to save a 3,200-pound NASA observatory from an untimely end

A first-of-its-kind mission launched Friday in the hopes of preventing NASA’s Swift Observatory from dropping out of low-Earth orbit.

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(CNN) — A mission to rescue one of NASA’s storied space observatories from falling to Earth has launched on a daring, first-of-its-kind endeavor.

If successful, it will mark the first time a commercial robotic mission has captured an uncrewed NASA spacecraft that wasn’t designed to be serviced in space, according to the agency.

Without intervention, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory would dip below a key orbital threshold this month due to atmospheric drag and the impact of recent solar activity. The observatory has studied an array of cosmic objects across multiple wavelengths of light for nearly 22 years.

The Swift operations team at Penn State University’s Eberly College of Science has reduced power usage and steered the observatory to eye the cosmos from a more streamlined position. But once sinking below an optimal altitude of about 185 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth, Swift is likely to reenter our planet’s atmosphere this fall, according to NASA’s predictions.

After realizing that the Swift mission might come to an end much sooner than anticipated, NASA put out a call for proposals for a solution.

“We didn’t want to set the precedent that anything that comes out of orbit has to be boosted, but this was not just any spacecraft, this is an observatory with unique capabilities for astrophysics,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, division director of astrophysics at NASA, during a June 17 news conference.

The agency selected Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies for the task in September, giving the company just nine months to design, build, test and launch a spacecraft capable of rendezvousing with Swift and boosting its orbit.

The robotic satellite, named LINK, launched from a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket that was released by the company’s modified L-1011 aircraft known as Stargazer.

Stargazer climbed to a strategic location of 40,000 feet (about 12,000 meters) above the Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, before dropping the rocket. At 4:36 a.m. ET Friday, the rocket’s motors fired to life, delivering the satellite directly into Swift’s orbit. The launch came after multiple weather delays, as well as a software issue that aborted a Thursday launch attempt and was fixed with an update.

Now, scientists must wait months to see whether the seemingly impossible venture paid off, as LINK goes through a series of steps to capture the 3,200-pound (1,452-kilogram) observatory and slowly raise Swift’s orbit to 370 miles (about 600 kilometers) above our planet.

“No one thought we would get as far as we’ve already gotten today, and I have to be honest, there are still risks ahead of us,” Domagal-Goldman said earlier. “But I’m both deeply thankful and as optimistic as I can be that we’ll meet those challenges because of the people that have worked on it.”

How to save a falling observatory

All satellites and spacecraft in low-Earth orbit experience a natural atmospheric drag that can lower their altitudes, especially if they don’t have any propulsion capabilities.

For Swift, an increase in solar activity magnified this impact over the past couple of years as the sun reached the peak of its 11-year cycle.

The sun attained solar maximum in 2024, releasing intense flares and coronal mass ejections that caused Earth’s atmosphere to expand, which only intensified the drag on Swift, according to NASA. Swift’s mission could have naturally come to an end, but the NASA team wanted to try to extend its scientific observations since no ready replacement exists for the telescope — and test capabilities needed for future exploration.

“Swift wasn’t designed to be serviced,” Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee said in a NASA release. “By demonstrating we can quickly and cost-effectively extend its lifetime, we’re creating a blueprint for servicing spacecraft that were never designed for on-orbit maintenance. If we’re going to build an enduring presence beyond Earth, we need the capability to manipulate our environment in space. That means deploying robotic spacecraft that can reposition, repair, refuel, and refit satellites after launch.”

The LINK satellite is about a third of Swift’s size, weighing 880 pounds (399 kilograms) and standing 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall. It’s equipped with about 20 feet (6 meters) of solar panels and a trio of robotic arms designed to grab Swift.

After a few weeks of testing its navigation and sensors in space, LINK will conduct a survey of Swift to determine the best grappling points on the observatory.

While the Katalyst Space team has identified some points based on Swift’s design, the observatory’s multilayer insulation may have deteriorated or shifted after having been in orbit for more than two decades.

During servicing missions for the Hubble Space Telescope, astronauts found that a similar covering on the telescope was falling apart.

“It kind of turned into this very delicate, almost glass-like substance,” Kieran Wilson, principal investigator for LINK at Katalyst Space, said of Hubble. “If you touched it, it would just shatter and continue to break. That’s very different than the flexible plastic blankets that were installed 20 years ago.”

After securing Swift in its grasp, LINK will carefully fire its three ion thrusters, aiming to boost the observatory slowly back to its original orbit over the course of two to three months.

Once LINK has achieved this feat, it will detach from Swift and reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

But many firsts have to happen in succession for the mission to be successful — and scientists said they hope the sun doesn’t belch out any unexpected activity that might derail operations or cause Swift to dip even more sharply than it already has.

“All of this is challenging and risky,” Wilson said. “There’s a lot of spacecraft that have had far longer development cycles with far more funding behind them that have failed for mundane reasons.”

If all goes according to plan, Swift will resume its full suite of scientific observations, rather than operating in its current limited capacity, by fall, said S. Bradley Cenko, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

What makes Swift worth saving

Swift launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. It has detected more than 2,000 sources of these high-energy bursts, which create heavy elements such as gold and platinum, Cenko said.

But Swift has also evolved to study a much broader range of cosmic objects in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma-ray light.

The observatory was named for fast-flying swift birds due to its ability to pivot rapidly to look at cosmic events and afterglows, enabling the study of comets, gravitational waves and black holes over long periods of time.

Hubble may have much greater sensitivity and capture more crisp images than Swift, but the large space telescope can take one or two days to reposition itself to point at a target of interest, Cenko said. Swift, on the other hand, can follow up in a matter of minutes, acting as NASA’s first responder in space when celestial objects flare with activity.

Cenko anticipates that, if the rescue mission is successful, data from Swift will continue to complement existing observatories, such as Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, as well upcoming missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, tackling astrophysics questions that would be impossible for any single telescope to solve.

“Swift is NASA’s multitool when it comes to studying the cosmos,” Cenko said. “For the last two decades, Swift has been a key player in NASA’s efforts to understand how the universe works, and we’re looking forward to getting back to that work after the boost is complete.”

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