{"id":772507,"date":"2026-07-01T17:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/772507\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T17:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:14:10","slug":"link-spacecraft-to-boost-nasas-swift-observatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/772507\/","title":{"rendered":"LINK Spacecraft to Boost NASA&#8217;s Swift Observatory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/gsfc-20260616-swiftboost-001.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>A Katalyst engineer runs tests on LINK while the satellite is inside the Pegasus XL rocket attached to the Stargazer aircraft at NASA&#8217;s Wallops Flight Facility.<\/p>\n<p>NASA\/Ron Beard<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/swift\/swift-boost-mission\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A first-of-its-kind mission<\/a> to raise the orbit of <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/swift\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NASA&#8217;s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory<\/a> is poised for launch no earlier than Thursday, July 2, 5:09 a.m. EDT (9:09 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. A robotic servicing spacecraft called LINK, built by Katalyst Space, will blast into orbit on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket attached to the belly of the company&#8217;s Stargazer aircraft, shown here in this photograph from the evening of Tuesday, June 16, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>After launch, LINK will attempt to rendezvous with, grapple, and slowly raise Swift&#8217;s altitude over several months, preventing it from re-entering Earth&#8217;s atmosphere later this year. If this daring mission is successful, it will be the first time a commercial robotic mission has captured a NASA spacecraft that is both uncrewed and not originally designed to be serviced in space.<\/p>\n<p>    \/Public Release.  This material from the originating organization\/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full <a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" style=\"color:#999;text-decoration:underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/image-article\/link-spacecraft-set-for-mission-to-boost-nasas-swift-observatory\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Katalyst engineer runs tests on LINK while the satellite is inside the Pegasus XL rocket attached to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,128],"class_list":["post-772507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}