{"id":840986,"date":"2026-08-01T19:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T19:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840986\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T19:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T19:45:10","slug":"heres-how-engineers-plan-to-save-the-satellite-sent-to-save-nasas-swift-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840986\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s how engineers plan to save the satellite sent to save NASA’s Swift mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

One week ago, more than 200 miles above the Earth, a refrigerator-size satellite making its way toward an attempted rescue of NASA\u2019s $500 million Swift gamma-ray observatory suddenly spun out of control<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t look good. The spacecraft, named Link, was rotating on multiple axes, rendering it unable to maintain a reliable communications link with the ground and complicating efforts to arrest the spin. Two of the satellite\u2019s three reaction wheels, used for pointing, also stopped working. Through sporadic radio contact, engineers discovered a problem with some of the spacecraft\u2019s cold gas thrusters used for finer attitude control.<\/p>\n

The Link satellite is built, owned, and operated by Katalyst Space Technologies, a satellite servicing startup that won a $30 million contract from NASA to fly up to the Swift observatory, grab onto it, and boost its orbit before succumbing to aerodynamic drag and burning up int he atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The clock is ticking. In a few months, Swift will be too low for Katalyst to complete the rescue. This is the first time NASA has contracted with a commercial company to service one of its satellites. The space agency gave Katalyst less than a year to put the mission together<\/a>. The Link satellite launched July 3 to begin the pursuit of Swift, and the mission proceeded mostly according to plan until last Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen this happened, it was during one of the passes without comms,\u201d said Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst, said in an interview with Ars. \u201cWe were, immediately prior, in a very stable configuration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katalyst\u2019s ground team, working from a control center near Denver, hurried to find a fix and recover the Link satellite. The good news was the spacecraft\u2019s other systems remained healthy, including its power supply, three xenon-fueled electric thrusters, and the rendezvous and robotics hardware the Link satellite needs to capture Swift.<\/p>\n

Keeping at it<\/p>\n

Ars spoke with Lee, Katalyst\u2019s chief executive, on Friday afternoon as the company\u2019s ground team worked to stabilize the spacecraft. The first step involves using the satellite\u2019s plasma engines to gradually slow the spin. The engines are primarily designed for orbit-raising, but they\u2019re also suitable for attitude control because they can vector their thrust with a two-axis gimbal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One week ago, more than 200 miles above the Earth, a refrigerator-size satellite making its way toward an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-840986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}