Katalyst’s Link rescue spacecraft launched successfully
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Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.
UPDATE: Katalyst engineers have established communications with Link, so the commissioning process can now begin.
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Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket this morning successfully launched the Link rescue spacecraft built by the startup Katalyst, aimed at rendezvousing and grabbing the Gehrels-Swift telescope and raising its orbit.
A mission to raise the altitude of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is underway after launching at 8:36 p.m. Marshall Islands Time (4:36 a.m. EDT), Friday, July 3, from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean.
LINK, a robotic servicing spacecraft built by Katalyst Space, launched into orbit on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, which was deployed by the company’s Stargazer, a modified L-1011 aircraft, at an altitude of about 40,000 feet.
The actual rescue won’t occur for several weeks, as the Katalyst team will spend several weeks checking out the spacecraft’s systems to make sure all is working as intended. Once this is assured, they will begin to slowly move towards Swift:
As it approaches, LINK will collect and send images of Swift to the ground, where teams at Katalyst and NASA will assess the planned grab points. This rendezvous and capture will be a slow and careful process that could take about a month.
Once its robotic arms are attached to Swift, LINK can begin to slowly push Swift upward. Over the course of a few months, LINK will attempt to return Swift close to its original launch altitude. Then, LINK will detach, leaving Swift in its new orbit.
The Gehrels-Swift team will then return the telescope to its operational status, following the same commissioning procedures used when the telescope was first placed in orbit in 2004.
As for the launch, this was Northrop Grumman’s second launch in 2026, and the last Pegasus launch ever. The air-launched rocket is now retired. It was created in the 1980s by the rocket startup Orbital Sciences with the intent to provide a low cost launch option. It launched a total of 46 times (with three failures in the early years), but in the past two decades it could not compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
79 SpaceX
42 China
10 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 79 to 74.
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‘By late July, if all goes according to plan, LINK will fly to within roughly 6 miles (9.6 km) of the languishing observatory before initiating its final approach and “proximity operations.”
The autonomous spacecraft, equipped with three sets of thrusters and five sensor systems, is then expected to take another week to rendezvous with SWIFT and use its three robot arms, each fitted with hand-like grippers, to gently grab hold of the satellite.
Once LINK has firmly grasped the observatory, it should take another 60 days to tow it to its target altitude about 373 miles (600 km) above Earth, double the height it will have fallen to just before rescue, according to Katalyst.’
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY
” . . .languishing observatory . . .”
Like it’s laying on a chaise lounge, smoking a cigarette in a holder. [Puff of smoke] “About time you showed up, dahling.”
I would like to congratulate the launch team on what must have been a huge effort to get this antique bird flying again successfully.
I’m sure there was an overwhelming loss of institutional knowledge over the lean launch years.
You guys pulled off a huge win.
I have to admit I was very skeptical and I was prepared to accept a failed mission due to the unique circumstances, but I have to say that it’s great to see what was a seriously dedicated team can accomplish against the odds.
Mission patch image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swift_rescue_mission_Katalyst_mission_patch.png
I think the design works well, and I like the motto; especially, given the circumstances.