The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is doomed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere in the coming months, after a high-risk effort to save it failed. On Wednesday 20 August, NASA said in a statement that an ongoing issue with the LINK spacecraft, built by US startup Katalyst Space, meant that an effort to dock with and boost Swift in orbit would no longer be attempted. It has been steadily dropping in orbit since its launch in 2004 due to atmospheric drag.
The $30 million rescue mission, designed and built in less than a year, was a last-ditch attempt to boost the telescope back into a higher orbit. Soon after launching, however, LINK began to spin out of control. While Katalyst later stabilised the spacecraft, it was deemed to have used too much fuel in the process to make the boost possible.
That means Swift will have a limited amount of final observations it can do before it re-enters the atmosphere by the end of the year, with no replacement telescope currently in the works.
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