Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite goes airborne in advance of launch
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Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.
Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite — that will attempt to grab the Gehrels-Swift space telescope and raise its orbit — began its journey to its launch area over the south Pacific on June 18, 2026 when Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket that will launch it was taken airborne by company’s Stargazer L-1011 airplane.
Stargazer, a modified L-1011 operated by Northrop Grumman, took off for Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Attached to the belly of the aircraft was one of the company’s Pegasus XL rockets with LINK inside.
…Stargazer will carry Pegasus and LINK to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean with stopovers in California and Hawai’i.
Sometime later this month Stargazer will go to its launch area, climb to 40,000 feet, and release the Pegasus rocket, which will then ignite its engines to carry Link into orbit. Link will then attempt to rendezvous with Gehrels-Swift, using its robot arms to catch it (the telescope has no grapple attachment). If successful, it will then raise the telescope’s orbit so that it can resume observations for years to come.
The mission is daring in more ways than just described. Katalyst has never done this before. It is a startup that reconfigured its first demo mission into this rescue mission.
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I’m really hoping this mission succeeds. Yesterday on What About It, Felix said that LINK will detach once Gehrels-Swift has been reboosted. Is that true, or will it remain attached to do other periodic reboosts? I can certainly see arguments for either approach, one giving more longevity, but also adding more unplanned mass to the satellite might stress its aiming mechanisms, or make them inaccurate.
Do you know?
I do not know, nor have I seen any clear statement one way or the other. Based on this lack of clarity from NASA and Katalyst, my guess is that no decision has been made. If Link can succeed, attach itself, and raise the orbit, only after all that has been done then will it be the time to consider what to do next.
The odds are it will detach, because Gehrels-Swift was not designed to operate with that extra mass.
Felix is right. The video on this NASA web page shows a separation after the boost is complete. The solution seems to be to not worry about docking to the Swift telescope but to push it from behind. The video shows what looks like “hands” on the ends of several “arms” that will make contact with the flat aft-end of Swift, but it does not look like it grabs swift in any way. It is similar to pushing on someone’s butt to help them up a hill, or something.
If there is leftover propellant, I suspect that the disposition would be to either rescue another satellite or reenter the LINK spacecraft.
NFL ‘Tush Push’
Ukraine or Israel should move to acquire the L-1011
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargazer_(aircraft)
Why? It’s old, expensive to maintain, and the rocket/missile it was built for is obsolete, no longer in production, and this mission is launching the last one in existence.
If either had any need for the thing – which neither does – it would be far more sensible to convert something a lot newer, more efficient and more available to whatever your imagined purpose might be – and something for which parts may still be had. Stargazer is the last of a dead-end line of aeronautical evolution. It should go to the boneyard and, in the fullness of time, to the knackers yard.
If the Sentinel ICBM program is finished, there will be lots of Minuteman cores that I could see as a cheap Skybolt replacement.
Skybolt terrified the Soviets.
Airlaunch can take play far from where exhaust plumes are expected to be seen.
Is there some unwritten SOP where Jeff gets automatically downvoted? Cuz a potential recycling of Minuteman into an air-launched freakshow sounds like just the thing to give our 21st century Commie adversaries the night sweats.
What gives them night sweats is Golden Dome. A bunch of former airliners flying around full of fractional Minutemen? Not so much.
That’s Nate most likely, and the David known for a foul mouth.
I could say 2+2=4, and he’d down vote that too.
People have certain “tells”
Arsenal planes get talked about on occasion.
The romantic in me wants the L-1011 to go out in a blaze of glory as a mega-drone hit by a SAM right after it releases a Mach 7 Putin buster.
Jeff Wright: Neither Nate nor any David who comments here has a “foul mouth.” If they did I would have noticed.
All they have done is bluntly but accurately challenge you to defend your many wild statements. If you make a claim (such as wanting the Ukraine to buy Northrop Grumman’s L-1011), you need to provide some rational justification for them to do it. Just because “the romantic in you” wants it is not a reason.
You do this endlessly, which rational people find irritating and bothersome. And when they call you on it, asking simply for you to at least make some effort to prove your points, you respond by calling them names, as you do here.
I am very tempted to suspend you for a week. However, I am in a kind mood. This is a warning. Either start having a real conversation the others who comment on this webpage, or you will I think eventually find yourself in trouble with me. At a minimum however stop with the insults.
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “I could say 2+2=4, and he’d down vote that too.”
Probably not, because everyone would know that he was obviously wrong, and that you were obviously right — a rare occasion.
The reason that you have the impression you are down voted or disagreed with is that you present ideas that no one sees as true, yet you do not explain why you think that they are true. Your statements are not obviously right. They need explanation.
Without explanation, we think that you are just doing stream of consciousness without putting in any thought. It does not help that you do not answer questions about your comments, because we can only conclude that what you tell us is unexplainable or indefensible.
Thank you for no longer giving us quite as many obscure, unknown references in your statements. Please spend a little more time and effort explaining each of your brief statements.
Dreaming that a Falcon might launch with a hydrolox upper stage would make sense if you explain that it would be more efficient, that it could take more mass to orbit. It is unlikely to happen, because the point of the Falcon project is not to maximize mass to orbit but to reduce cost to orbit so that more business can be conducted in space. It worked very well, unlike the previous six decades during which performance was emphasized.
“People have certain ‘tells’”
Coming from someone who writes in nothing but tells.
Of course, pushing the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons is not a tell.
Arsenal planes do get talked about occasionally.
Most of the talk I saw was awhile ago and centered on use of B-747 airframes as they are the biggest generally available, are quite available and can be fitted with more powerful engines to handle a high “bomb load.”
But with drone tech advancing so fast, a cloud of drones is harder to fight and far less vulnerable to a single-point take-out of many munitions than a big, lumbering “bomb truck.”
The closest thing to an arsenal plane these days is probably the palletized Rapid Dragon system that can poop loads of long-range stealthy loitering cruise missiles out the back ramp of a C-130 or C-17.
Your romantic scenario might sell to Hollywood, but if the Ukes really want to scrag Putin, they can likely already do that with stuff they’ve got now. Given how the war is going better and better for Ukraine every day, I suspect the Ukes figure leaving Putin be gives them their best shot at out-and-out victory. I’d be inclined to agree.
great
I wish them the best of luck. This is the kind of mission we should see a lot more of. Something put together quickly with a minimum of fuss and no 10 year proposal cycle with stacks of paper that reach orbital altitude.
That would be, let me see, Yankee Ingenuity.
Well, Blair Ivey, I guess they saw the NFL do it and thought, “It works for them, maybe it will work for us, too.” Don’t question success.
Maybe they can try this boost on July 4th?