Developed in under a year to rendezvous, dock with, and boost the orbit of NASA’s aging Swift Space Telescope, Katalyst Space’s LINK spacecraft is launched. Riding a Pegasus XL rocket launched from an airborne aircraft, LINK arrives in orbit and passes its initial checkout phase, getting the greenlight to proceed to its rendezvous. The Swift Telescope was launched in 2004, and has proven to be one of NASA’s most productive orbiting observatories. In a scenario not unlike that which doomed the Skylab space station in 1979, solar flare activity has caused expansion of Earth’s atmosphere, increasing drag on the Swift spacecraft. Taking a month to reach Swift, LINK is expected to grapple onto the older spacecraft and fire its thrusters to push Swift into a higher orbit, where the otherwise perfectly functional telescope can continue its campaign of observations for years to come. (LINK’s mission also bears some resemblance to a proposed mission to boost Skylab’s orbit before it re-entered the atmosphere in 1979.) Left unchecked, Swift would re-enter the atmosphere in October. If LINK’s mission is successful, the Swift Telescope will be able to resume its observations in September 2026, and another LINK-style mission could be approved to boost the Hubble Space Telescope.
