Artist rendering of Link (on left) about to attach to Gehrels-Swift.
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The engineers for the satellite repair startup Katalyst successfully uploaded new software to its Link spacecraft so that it can now maneuver using its one remaining operational electrical thruster.

Katalyst Space successfully uploaded a flight software update for its LINK spacecraft, which is set to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbit. The software update’s new attitude control algorithms are designed to maintain LINK’s stability using the spacecraft’s remaining actuators.

The team’s work has prepared LINK to continue its approach toward Swift, before attempting to capture and raise Swift to a higher orbital altitude. Katalyst will continue to work closely with NASA, evaluating LINK’s performance at each phase, as the team performs a series of burns and maneuvers in the coming days to align LINK’s orbit with Swift.

The Gehrels-Swift Observatory has been one of NASA’s most successful orbiting telescopes, almost as useful as Hubble. It can look at objects in optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray wavelengths, and more important, can quickly swing around to aim at locations on quick notice. It was designed this way specifically to look at the very rough locations of gamma ray bursts (GRBs), and thus obtain the first observations of those explosions in other wavelengths, proving GRBs were events in the early universe, each of which signals the birth of a black hole.

This risky rescue mission of Gehrels-Swift appears increasingly hopeful. And it is being attempted by a private startup on its first mission.