A specially built spacecraft rocketed into orbit on Saturday (July 4, 2026) on a mission to intercept and save NASA's Swift Observatory before it falls out of the sky. The telescope, launched back in 2004, has been losing altitude faster than expected after a string of recent solar storms. Without intervention, it's on track to burn up in the atmosphere by October.
Northrop Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologies' Link spacecraft from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, using a Pegasus rocket dropped from the belly of a modified aircraft. Link is now on course to reach Swift in about a month, where it will use its three robotic arms to physically capture the telescope and begin boosting it back into a stable orbit. NASA is paying Katalyst roughly $30 million (NZ$52.5 million) for the job.
Swift currently orbits about 360 kilometres above Earth, well below where it started. Increased solar activity has been heating and expanding the upper atmosphere, creating extra drag that pulls low-orbit satellites and telescopes downward faster than usual.
Katalyst plans to raise Swift's altitude by 240 kilometres, restoring it close to its original orbit. To avoid damaging the 1.4-metric-tonne telescope, Link's thrusters will fire gradually rather than delivering a single hard push. NASA has already paused Swift's observations to preserve what altitude remains while the rescue is underway.
Katalyst had just nine months to design, build, and launch the mission, an unusually tight timeline forced by how quickly Swift's orbit was decaying. Bad weather and technical glitches pushed the launch back several times before it finally got off the ground.
Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee acknowledged the pressure involved, saying the greater risk had always been doing nothing and watching Swift disintegrate in the atmosphere. He added that the team had worked to avoid exactly that outcome.
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If the mission goes as planned, Swift could resume scanning the sky by September, continuing its work tracking gamma-ray bursts and exploding stars, some of the most energetic events in the universe.
The mission is also being watched closely as it may not be the last of its kind. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is experiencing a similar drop in altitude for the same rise in solar activity, and could become a candidate for a comparable rescue operation within the next few years.