After 22 years in space, "Swift" is coming home — in the most dramatic way possible. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is rapidly falling from orbit, and after a daring commercial rescue mission failed, the telescope is expected to burn up in Earth's atmosphere within weeks.
A Space Tow Truck Built in Nine Months Couldn't Grab It
To save Swift, NASA awarded Flagstaff, Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies a contract worth nearly $30 million in September 2024: build a robot that could grapple the telescope and lift it into a stable orbit. Katalyst built the LINK satellite in just nine months — billed as "America's first commercial space robot" — and launched it July 3 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific.
At first, everything looked on track. LINK closed to within 7.5 to 9 miles of Swift, deployed three robotic arms, and fired electric propulsion thrusters in demonstrations of close-proximity servicing. Then its reaction wheels and thrusters malfunctioned, sending LINK into an uncontrollable spin. Control was eventually restored, but not enough propellant remained to complete the capture. The attempt was abandoned last month, and after 85 days in orbit, LINK reentered the atmosphere on September 25.
"From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA Headquarters' Astrophysics Division director. "Without intervention, Swift was going to re-enter the atmosphere by year's end. And while we'll be sad to see Swift's mission come to a close, we knew this boost effort would be valuable either way — advancing U.S. spacecraft servicing technology."
Swift launched in 2004 into an initial orbit of about 600 kilometers — well past its designed lifetime. It carries no propulsion system; in recent years, intense solar activity expanded Earth's upper atmosphere, sharply increasing drag and pulling it down far faster than projected. The irony: solar activity is exactly the kind of phenomenon observatories like Swift were built to study.
The 3,200-pound (1,452-kilogram) observatory now sits about 200 miles (325 kilometers) above Earth. NASA engineers estimate that once it drifts below 185 miles (300 kilometers) in early to mid-October, operating it will become difficult; it is then expected to drop from orbit and burn up, likely in November. Space-tracking company LeoLabs assessed that while some hardware might survive reentry, "the probability of debris causing significant property damage or physical harm to anyone is very small" — fragments would most likely fall into the ocean or onto uninhabited land.
The science team isn't waiting quietly for the end. Since August, flight controllers have switched two of Swift's instruments back on, and another last week — its X-ray telescope recently captured the Tycho supernova remnant, some 13,000 light-years away. If you're going out, the thinking goes, you might as well catch a few more of the universe's biggest explosions.
Over 22 years, Swift — built to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe — also tracked flaring black holes, asteroids, and comets; in 2025 it even spotted a rare "orphan" black hole devouring a star. Its fall is a loss, but the on-orbit servicing lessons LINK left behind may be the best legacy for the next generation of telescopes.