NASA has called off its rescue mission for the aging Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the private spacecraft sent to boost it into a higher orbit suffered an unrecoverable hardware failure. The 21 year old telescope, which has spent more than two decades mapping gamma ray bursts, will now burn up re-entering Earth’s atmosphere later this year.
NASA hired Katalyst Space Technologies to build and fly a servicing spacecraft called LINK, giving the startup roughly nine months to design, build, and launch it after realizing Swift’s orbit was decaying faster than expected. LINK launched July 3 on a Pegasus XL rocket. About three weeks later, two of its three reaction wheels failed, sending it into an uncontrolled spin and cutting off reliable communication.
Why Couldn’t NASA Just Try Again?
Katalyst did regain some control of LINK after the initial spin, but the recovery cost roughly a month, and on August 19 NASA and Katalyst jointly announced the spacecraft would not be able to capture and boost Swift after all. There was no backup plan; the $30 million mission was built as a single attempt on a compressed timeline, not a multi-try campaign, because Swift’s orbit was already falling too fast to wait for a second spacecraft.
Katalyst says it will still attempt to approach Swift for technology demonstration purposes, even without the boost. That’s a consolation prize for the company, not for the observatory, which entered service in 2004 and will not be replaced by this mission regardless of what LINK manages to demonstrate on its way past. More detail on the failure is available from CNN.
