A private spacecraft failed to rescue NASA's Swift space telescope, meaning the big observatory will come crashing back to Earth in the near future.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched to Earth orbit in November 2004. Over the past two decades, it studied gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe — and other cosmic objects and events using a trio of telescopes.

But Swift's science work is now done, and its days in orbit are numbered.

Call to action

In September 2025, NASA put out a call to action to save Swift, whose orbit was decaying quickly due to high solar activity. The bottom line: The observatory needed a boost to a higher orbit soon, or it would be dragged down to its death in Earth's atmosphere.

The Arizona-based company Katalyst Space Technologies answered that call, and won a $30 million NASA contract to perform the re-boost. In hurry-and-scurry mode, Katalyst built a robotic spacecraft called LINK, which launched on July 3 to meet up with Swift and haul it to a higher orbit.

But LINK suffered attitude-control issues after launch, causing NASA and Katalyst to wave off the rescue attempt.

Timeline troubles

Ghonhee Lee is the CEO of Katalyst Space Technologies.

Speaking to CNN News Central on Aug. 24, Lee said: "You know, this is not the outcome that we wanted, but I think it's very important to recognize the unprecedented scale. This was an ambitious, high-risk, high-reward mission where we designed, built and launched a space robot within nine months."

Lee said that the timeline worked against the group. "I think if we had had 12 months even — just three more months — it would have made a tremendous difference," he told CNN's Kate Bolduan.

Swift is now coming back down to Earth, but it's unclear when and where.

Uncontrolled reentry

"Yes, Swift will have an uncontrolled reentry," said Alise Fisher, public affairs specialist in astrophysics within the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The spacecraft's specific timing for reentry will depend on a number of factors, Fisher told Space.com. "Swift is not likely to reenter sooner than October. NASA will share more information as reentry approaches, following established interagency procedures for such notifications."

NASA expects most of the Swift spacecraft to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, Fisher said, "but some components are expected to survive reentry. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is unlikely."

Survivability analysis

Swift's dry mass is 613 kilograms (1,351 pounds). The spacecraft's science gear includes a Burst Alert Telescope, an Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope and an X-Ray Telescope.

So what might make it to Earth during Swift's speedy fall through the atmosphere?

The observatory's "dry mass and instruments are such that it will likely disintegrate sufficiently upon reentry to not pose a ground casualty hazard," said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a company that keeps a persistent eye on what's going on in Earth orbit.

"However, it has both an X-ray telescope and optical telescope, so the internal workings of those devices might survive," McKnight told Space.com. He said that optical lenses, along with titanium tanks, are components that might make it to the ground.

"I am sure that they have done the analysis but have seen no public reporting on the survivability analysis," he said.

A sign of things to come?

Swift is unlikely to burn up entirely upon reentry, given its mass, said Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. student in interdisciplinary studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a junior fellow at the university's Outer Space Institute.

We also don't know where it will come down, he noted.

"It has an orbital inclination of 21 degrees, so could reenter anywhere in any latitude from 21 North to 21 South," Wright told Space.com. "The most likely outcome is that any surviving debris will land in the sea, but there is a chance it could impact a built-up area and cause a casualty."

Even if Swift's return to Earth is uneventful, "there are more and more uncontrolled reentries of satellites and rockets each year, and the chance that someone will be hit is growing," Wright said.

NASA is calling off the effort to save its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after a private rescue spacecraft couldn't overcome its own problems in orbit.

LINK, the specialized probe from Katalyst Space that NASA contracted for the Swift Boost mission, was delivered to space on an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on July 3. The vehicle was designed to rendezvous with the Swift Observatory in order to grapple and raise it to a more stable orbit, but LINK ran into trouble when it began to spin uncontrollably about three weeks after launch.

Today (Aug. 19), NASA announced an official end to LINK's efforts to boost Swift's orbit, citing ongoing attitude control issues with the private spacecraft, but the agency hasn't canceled the mission outright. LINK will still attempt a rendezvous with Swift in order to practice proximity operations and demonstrate its capabilities other than spacecraft capture, which could aid future missions down the road.

From its inception, the Swift Boost mission was always viewed as a long shot. Increased solar activity had already begun decaying the observatory's orbit faster than anticipated when NASA awarded the $30 million Swift Boost contract to Katalyst in 2025, giving the Arizona-based company less than a year to complete LINK's design, manufacture and testing before time to save Swift would run out.

"NASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did with this mission," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement today. "This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting. The team moved with extraordinary speed to give Swift a chance to carry out more science while advancing capabilities America will need for satellite servicing in the future."

Swift is a one-of-its kind orbital observatory designed to study high-energy phenomena across the universe. It can detect sudden events like gamma-ray bursts and quickly direct its instruments to study them in X-ray, ultraviolet and visible light. The spacecraft is also routinely redirected for rapid response research to study things like newly discovered supernovae, black-hole ejections, fast radio bursts and other short-lived astronomical events.

With LINK now incapable of boosting Swift's orbit, NASA estimates the observatory will dip catastrophically low into Earth's atmosphere before the end of the year. After Swift dies, the agency says it will "continue to prioritize finding new options to react rapidly to cosmic events, using current missions to help fill the gap in the meantime."

Katalyst is working closely with NASA as the Swift Boost mission enters its next phase. Together, the company and space agency are evaluating logistics for LINK's rendezvous and maneuvering demonstration within Swift's vicinity, which will provide data for potential future servicing missions to other satellites, NASA's statement says.

A private rescue spacecraft is having troubles of its own in Earth orbit.

LINK, a satellite built and operated by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies, launched July 3 on a daring and unprecedented mission: Rendezvous with NASA's Swift space telescope and boost the observatory to a higher orbit before it falls out of the sky.

About three weeks after launch, however, LINK started spinning at an unexpected rate, a problem that caused a temporary communications dropout and a reset of its satellite platform. And two of LINK's three orientation-controlling reaction wheels stopped working.

Spacecraft operators always work hard to fix such problems when they crop up, but there's a special urgency where LINK is concerned. It needs to reach Swift soon, or atmospheric drag will pull the observatory — which possesses no thrusters of its own — down past a point of no return. NASA thinks this boundary lies at around 186 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth, an altitude that Swift is expected to reach by October.

So the original plan called for LINK to meet up with Swift in early August, just a month after launch — pretty much as soon as commissioning work on the rescue craft wrapped up. That's not going to happen at this point, but mission teams haven't given up on the rescue attempt. Indeed, they're making progress on getting LINK back up to speed, as a new update relates.

"LINK originally was in a multi-axis spin rotating at about 9 degrees per second, which resulted in sporadic communications and impeded LINK’s progress toward Swift," NASA officials wrote in the update, which the agency posted on Thursday (Aug. 6).

"Using a series of burns from one of LINK’s electric propulsion thrusters, the Katalyst team now has slowed that spin to about 1.47 degrees per second," they added. "Katalyst plans to keep LINK at that spin rate as it proceeds with next steps for the mission."

Those next steps include uploading flight software updates "with new attitude controllers designed to maintain LINK’s stability in its current configuration," NASA officials wrote. "These updates would allow LINK to begin maneuvering to align with Swift’s orbit."

The updates are expected to be beamed up to LINK "in the coming days," according to the update.

Swift — officially known as the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic events in the universe.

The $250 million telescope's initial altitude was about 375 miles (600 km). But it has fallen considerably since then, and the descent is accelerating: The lower Swift goes, the more atmosphere it encounters and the greater the force of frictional drag becomes.

Swift is still working just fine, which explains why NASA wants to save it. Last September, the agency awarded Katalyst $30 million to build LINK — a refrigerator-sized spacecraft with three robotic arms — and fly its rescue mission.

That's a very tight timeline, but Katalyst hit it, getting LINK ready by its launch date and checking off a number of commissioning milestones before running into trouble. The company has experience delivering under pressure, so maybe it can pull off the rescue craft's rescue before it's too late.

China brought two spacecraft together high above Earth as part of a refueling demonstration mission, according to a space situational awareness company.

China's Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites had been moving toward each other in geosynchronous orbit, around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above the equator, Spacenews reported on June 6. And now the pair appear to have had a brief first encounter, according to observations from the ground.

Optical tracking by the space situational awareness firm s2a systems shows a close approach between the two on June 14, with the pair, at times, virtually unresolvable from the other. This suggests that Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 made at least a test-run close approach and may have even performed a docking and undocking test.

Tracking from s2a indicates that the two spacecraft made very close approaches on both June 13 and June 14.

The test aims to demonstrate on-orbit refueling and mission extension capabilities, helping to improve the sustainability of space operations.

Shijian-25 launched in January to demonstrate on-orbit refueling and satellite servicing, while Shijian-21 launched in 2021 and towed a dead satellite out of geosynchronous orbit and into a higher, "graveyard" orbit.

Both spacecraft were developed by China's state-owned Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST). SpaceNews also reported that U.S. surveillance spacecraft USA 270 and USA 271 were nearby, to the east and west of the two Chinese spacecraft, and likely to observe the activity.

The U.S., through the aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, has already tested life-extension services for satellites in geosynchronous orbit with its Mission Extension Vehicle-1 and Mission Extension Vehicle-2 spacecraft, while Tokyo-based company Astroscale aims to carry out its own complex refueling tests as soon as next year.

The world at large is working to stop the fast-progressing degradation of Earth's environment. In the space sector, however, one-use-only products still reign supreme. The advent of megaconstellations has, in fact, accelerated the rate at which the space industry burns through resources, shifting from big satellites with decades-long lifespans to cheaper birds designed to expire within a few short years.

The disposable approach worries some researchers, as too much aluminum is burning up in the atmosphere these days, threatening to cause a new kind of environmental disaster in the decades to come. But what can we do? Should we roll back the space revolution and put a cap on what we can do in space? Or could a circular economy, life extension, recycling and reuse be the solution to the space industry's dirty side effects?

Proponents of in-orbit servicing and refueling laud the technology's potential. But most analysts remain cautious: Without strict environmental regulations, the expected cost of in-orbit servicing may not entice satellite operators to switch to reusable technology en masse.

Dave Barnhart, chief executive officer of the California-based aerospace company Arkisys, first began developing concepts of recyclable satellite technology some 15 years ago as part of a project he oversaw at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). He and his colleagues investigated how to set up a satellite recycling facility in geostationary orbit — the region about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface where satellites appear fixed above one spot above the equator.

"We wanted to know whether we can use parts from old geo satellites to recreate new ones, because the mass is already there," Barnhart told Space.com.

The geostationary ring is home to some of the largest and most expensive satellites. On top of that, the long distance between Earth and this orbit makes geo missions inherently costly, as they require the most powerful rockets with a lot of fuel to reach their destination.

Yet, Arkisys, the company Barnhart cofounded in 2015, is focusing on low Earth orbit (LEO) — the buzzing region closest to Earth up to altitudes of about 1,200 miles (2,000 km). Arkisyshopes to set up an in-orbit servicing and refueling depot called the Port in LEO. The main goal is to spearhead a green revolution in this region, which gives rise to thousands of tons of dangerous space debris every year.

"To date, everything we have ever designed to go into space has been one mission, one life," Barnhart told Space.com. "It's sort of crazy. Every other domain on Earth, we maintain, we sustain, we grow. Not in space."

In 2023, Arkisys secured a $1.6 million deal from the U.S. Space Force to test satellite assembly in orbit using the Port demo module — a basic building block of a scalable orbiting garage and gas station. The company wants to launch the first component of this orbital depot next year — a last-mile transportation device called the Cutter, which is designed to help satellites to dock with the garage.

In 2027, the main Port module, a hexagonal structure about 9 feet (3 meters) wide, will join the Cutter in orbit to test how the mechanical interfaces of the two work together in space. The Port, in addition to serving as a fuel depot, will arrive with a supply of components and payloads that could be attached to worn-out satellites to give them a new lease on life.

"Today, everything on a satellite is done on the ground, and the satellite is launched with an end date," Barnhart said. "We want to shift that to allow extensions of both — life and business — post-launch. We want to be able to add new revenue streams post-launch. You can do that if you can add something, change something in orbit, or even sell that satellite to somebody else who could make it part of a larger platform."

Cameras or antennas could be replaced with more powerful ones once those get developed, worn-out batteries could be swapped for brand-new ones, and fuel tanks would get refilled.

It all makes sense on paper, but Dafni Christodoulopoulou, space industry analyst at the consultancy company Analysis Mason, warns that whether satellite operators would be inclined to ditch their disposable ways will come down to the cost of the in-orbit maintenance services. LEO is currently dominated by small, relatively cheap satellites, she says, which can be replaced more cheaply than they can be serviced and maintained.

"Right now, we expect in-orbit services to come at a cost that might be quite high for operators of small satellites," Christodoulopoulou told Space.com. "The operators might not be interested in those services, because the price of building a new satellite might not be higher than that of a servicing mission."

Barnhart agrees that the fledgling in-orbit servicing industry is likely to face resistance not just from operators but also from satellite manufacturers, who might feel threatened by the idea of reusability and life extension.

"Every time you want to make a big shift like this, it's going to be a threat," Barnhart said. "Satellite manufacturers make money by building more satellites to throw away. It might take some time for them to see that by fitting satellites with interfaces that allow them to be serviced, they could actually add some cool functionality to them after launch."

Still, Christodoulopoulou thinks that in-orbit servicing will eventually make a difference to how things are done in space, and also to the state of the orbital environment.

"The number of satellite launches is not expected to go down, so there will be a high need for constellation management, flexibility, disposal and life extension," she said. "I think in-orbit services can definitely help prevent the buildup of space debris and maintain long-term sustainability in orbit."

The U.S. government certainly appears to think that life extension is the way forward. In addition to funding the Arkisys experiment, the Space Force also funds the Tetra-5 and Tetra-6 missions to test in-orbit refueling technologies in space. The two missions, designed to test hardware developed by Orbit Fab, Astroscale and Northrop Grumman, are set to launch in 2026 and 2027, respectively.

In addition, intensifying geopolitical tensions are increasing the need for quick deployment of new systems in space, which, Barnhart says, could be more speedily addressed with servicing systems such as the Port, than by building new spacecraft from scratch on Earth.

"If there is a new threat that has been identified, you might need a new type of sensor or a new payload to observe it," Barnhart said. "If we can augment the satellites that the government has already put up and provide them with a new capability, a new sensor, we can address those threats much faster."

Christodoulopoulou thinks that new regulations designed to protect the environment and curb the air pollution related to satellite reentries could further help move the needle toward a less throwaway culture in space utilization.

"There need to be a few changes," Christodoulopoulou said. "There needs to be more awareness among satellite operators to understand that in-orbit servicing offers a value in the long term. But also on the government side, there need to be more regulations to support the in-orbit servicing providers."

By the middle of the decade, it may be possible to salvage satellites that run out of fuel or suffer minor malfunctions in orbit.

Canada-based aerospace firm MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. is designing a spacecraft that will serve as an orbiting gas station and mechanic. The robotic vehicle will be able to top off satellites' fuel tanks and perform minor repairs as needed. MDA's first servicing satellite could be ready to go by 2015 or 2016, if a suitable customer steps up, company officials said.

"The future for space servicing is definitely now," Dan King, director of orbital robotics at MDA, said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group yesterday (Feb. 15). "The key technologies that are needed to do some fundamental operational-type services are here."

Extending satellites' lives

Currently, most satellites last only as long as their stores of onboard propellant allow. When a spacecraft runs out of fuel, it essentially turns into a very expensive piece of space junk, adding to the massive cloud of debris already clogging Earth orbit.

"The analogy is almost like, you drive your Ferrari and you throw away your Ferrari after running a single tank of gas," King said.

MDA wants to change this by developing a refueling spacecraft called the Space Infrastructure Servicing vehicle. The unmanned SIS would be an orbital mechanic as a well as a gas station attendant, using its robotic arm and tool kit to make minor repairs to stricken satellites. [Video: How the Refueling Satellite Will Work]

The servicing spacecraft would be controlled from the ground, but it could operate with varying degrees of autonomy, depending on the characteristics of each mission, King said.

The SIS vehicle is designed to refuel and repair a variety of client satellites, ranging from commercial to governmental. The flying gas station would be about the size of a standard telecommunications satellite, but far more of its weight would consist of propellant, King said.

According to MDA's designs, when the SIS spacecraft itself runs low on fuel, a separately launched "tanker" would replenish its supply of propellant, allowing the vehicle to continue servicing satellites far into the future.

"We very much plan to have this as a sustainable and expandable-type service as well," King said.

MDA could launch its first SIS within three and half years, King added, so a servicing satellite could be operational by 2015 or 2016 — provided the company can find a customer.

A deal falls through

MDA thought it found that customer last year. In March 2011, satellite operator Intelsat agreed to pay $280 million over time for the SIS vehicle to refuel certain craft in its fleet. The maiden SIS mission was to fly in 2015.

However, the two companies announced last month that the deal is off.

"As with any contract, there are various time-based criteria that have to be met," King said. "And I guess we were not able to meet those datelines for the original plan, due to various factors."

One of those factors, King said, was a lack of clarity and commitment from the United States government. A show of support — or at least a better idea of where the government stands — could help jumpstart the satellite-servicing industry, he added.

"There is sufficient commercial-type market and demand to close the business case," King said. "But on the other hand, government-type investment at least needs to be clarified, as to what extent it's available and can help."

An idea whose time has come?

MDA isn't the only business or organization working to develop satellite-servicing technology. Aerospace firm Vivisat, for example, is designing a spacecraft called the Mission Extension Vehicle, which would dock to satellites and provide propulsion and attitude control.

The U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has started a program called Phoenix, which seeks to recycle still-functioning pieces of defunct satellites and incorporate them into new space systems for low cost.

Phoenix aims to use a robotic servicing spacecraft to snag still-working antennas from the many retired and dead satellites in geosynchronous orbit — about 22,000 miles (35,406 kilometers) above Earth — and attach them to smaller "satlets," or nanosatellites launched from Earth.

And next month, NASA will begin the first tests of its Robotic Refueling Mission, an experiment that was delivered to the International Space Station on the final space shuttle flight in July 2011. RRM will serve as a trial for the orbiting lab's twin-armed Dextre robot, testing the ability to refuel and otherwise maintain satellites in space.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.