The Fight to Save NASA’s Swift Observatory Is (Literally) Spinning Out of Control

Well, here we are. Almost exactly a month ago, we covered the necessarily rushed mission to save NASA’s gamma-ray-detecting Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from deorbiting and burning up. It had a very short window for launch and rendezvous, led by the newcomer private space company Katalyst Space, but it was the best idea anyone could come up with within the given timeframe.

Unfortunately, these circumstances have culminated in the news released late yesterday: Katalyst’s LINK robotic spacecraft has experienced major failures in two of its reaction wheels, which allow it to maintain attitude. With only one functioning reaction wheel left, the mission is not just dead in the water but spinning wildly out of control.

Perhaps even worse, the spinning is causing communication to come and go, making it even harder to fix the problem.

According to the Associated Press, Katalyst maintains that there’s a chance to regain control of the $30 million NASA-funded mission and continue the rescue. It will attempt to approach, link up with Swift, and provide an additional upward burn from its own thrusters.

There’s also an unspecified problem with the cold gas thrusters that provide finer attitude control; however, Katalyst is turning to the electric ion thrusters to exert some control over the rogue orbital robot. Those are the thrusters intended to actually raise Swift’s orbit once the rendezvous is completed; they were not intended for their new purpose.

Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing satellite awaits encapsulation inside its launch vehicle.
Credit: NASA

The nature of the control problems does make it seem just a bit optimistic to imagine that working, especially in the limited time remaining. Swift will drift low enough to begin breaking up within just a couple of months.

Then again, Katalyst’s Kieran Wilson previously said that the firm is “…confident that as long as we have spacecraft that can function at a fundamental level, that gives us the freedom and flexibility to work through any issues we find during rendezvous and more challenging dynamical operations.”

So, we’ll see how Katalyst handles this particular problem. NASA likely would not have announced the issue, however, had they not already been given a reasonable amount of time to address it.

As mentioned in our prior reporting on this mission, this was always a risky maneuver, and its rushed nature always gave it a real chance of failure. That said, I also predicted that if the mission failed, the public would come to blame Swift’s death on NASA’s startup partners killing a scientific instrument, which would become the narrative.

NASA’s push towards public-private cooperation is, in the short term, a definitive shift away from government-led programs and towards private-led ones. Sure enough, Katalyst’s attempt to give that arrangement a boost may well end up having the opposite of the intended effect.