Commercial Robot Set to Launch to Reboost Aging Swift Space Telescope

NASA says a commercial robotic spacecraft is set to launch no earlier than Thursday on a first-of-its-kind attempt to save an aging but still productive space telescope from orbital decay.

The mission, called Swift Boost, is aimed at raising the orbit of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a NASA science satellite launched in 2004 that studies gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy cosmic events. Without intervention, NASA says Swift’s orbit has been decaying fast enough that agency models showed a risk of uncontrolled reentry in fall 2026.

The launch is scheduled for no earlier than 5:09 a.m. EDT on July 2 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The spacecraft, called LINK, was designed and built by Katalyst Space of Flagstaff, Arizona. It will fly on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket carried aloft by the company’s L-1011 Stargazer aircraft.

NASA awarded Katalyst $30 million in September 2025 under a Phase III Small Business Innovation Research award to carry out the mission, part of a broader agency push to develop commercial on-orbit servicing capabilities on a rapid timetable.

If all goes as planned, LINK will separate after launch, rendezvous with Swift in low Earth orbit, inspect the observatory at close range and then grapple it. The robotic servicer will then gradually raise Swift’s altitude over several months. NASA says the reboost must happen while Swift remains above about 185 miles, or 300 kilometers, in altitude.

That task is notable because Swift was never built to be serviced. NASA describes the mission as “first-of-its-kind” because, if successful, it would mark the first commercial robotic mission to capture a government spacecraft that is uncrewed and was not originally designed with a servicing interface.

LINK is an approximately 880-pound, or about 400-kilogram, spacecraft equipped with three robotic arms and precision guidance, navigation and control systems intended to let it approach and secure the observatory safely.

Commercial satellite servicing is not entirely new. Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle docked with commercial Intelsat satellites in geostationary orbit in 2020 and 2021. But Swift Boost is a different kind of challenge: a NASA science spacecraft in low Earth orbit that lacks a docking port and now needs a rescue mission to stay in space.

The urgency stems in part from the sun. NASA says increased solar activity has accelerated the drag on Swift’s orbit, pulling the spacecraft downward faster than expected. Rather than accept the likely loss of an operating observatory, the agency is trying to preserve it.

“We’re doing this on a time scale that’s kind of crazy by space standards,” Brad Cenko, a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and principal investigator for Swift, said in a Katalyst Space press release last month.

Swift launched on Nov. 20, 2004, and remains scientifically useful more than two decades later. The mission is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, while Penn State handles mission operations.

The spacecraft built to extend Swift’s life has already reached the final stages of launch preparation. NASA says LINK arrived at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on June 5 and was encapsulated and integrated with the Pegasus rocket in mid-June before transfer to Kwajalein.

Now the immediate test is close at hand: a predawn launch from the central Pacific that NASA hopes will begin a delicate effort to capture and lift one of its older observatories before time and orbital drag run out.