NASA has revised the objectives of its commercial Swift Boost Mission after an ongoing attitude-control problem prevented Katalyst Space’s LINK spacecraft from carrying out its planned orbital manoeuvre.
LINK will no longer attempt to capture and boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbit, which was intended to extend the 21-year-old observatory’s science mission. Instead, the spacecraft will attempt rendezvous and proximity operations with Swift to demonstrate technologies for future in-space servicing missions.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the mission represented a deliberate high-risk effort to rapidly develop commercial space-servicing capabilities.
“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting,” Isaacman said, adding that NASA would use data from the rendezvous attempt to inform future missions.
Swift was launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts and other rapidly changing cosmic phenomena. Originally designed for a two-year primary mission, the observatory has continued scientific operations for more than two decades.
However, increasing solar activity has accelerated the decay of Swift’s low-Earth orbit, creating an opportunity for NASA to test commercial spacecraft servicing as an alternative to simply allowing the ageing satellite to re-enter the atmosphere.
NASA awarded Katalyst a contract in September 2025 to develop and launch the servicing mission on an unusually compressed timeline of less than a year.
LINK launched on 3 July aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. Following launch, mission teams established communications and conducted in-orbit checkouts before the spacecraft encountered its attitude-control problem.
Despite the loss of the planned orbital boost, NASA said the mission has already generated valuable experience in commercial spacecraft development, launch and operations. The agency and Katalyst will now focus on extracting as much data as possible from the rendezvous attempt, particularly for future satellite servicing and proximity operations.
Without intervention, NASA expects Swift to re-enter Earth's atmosphere later this year. The mission highlights NASA’s growing reliance on commercial partners to develop capabilities that could support future satellite servicing, spacecraft life extension and other in-space operations.
NASA said lessons from the mission will help strengthen the US commercial space industry and inform future efforts to respond rapidly to emerging scientific and exploration opportunities.
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