PHOENIX — As preparations continue for a mission to raise the orbit of NASA’s Swift astrophysics spacecraft, project officials are also pursuing steps to extend the satellite’s operational life in case of delays.
NASA awarded a contract in September to satellite-servicing startup Katalyst Space to send a spacecraft to Swift, a 21-year-old observatory that detects gamma-ray bursts and whose orbit is decaying because of atmospheric drag. The Katalyst spacecraft is designed to attach to Swift and raise its orbit to extend its lifetime.
The mission is scheduled to launch in mid-2026 on a Pegasus XL rocket under a contract between Katalyst and Northrop Grumman announced in November. By the fall, Swift’s orbit will have decayed too far for the reboost mission to be feasible.
In a presentation Jan. 4 at a joint meeting of three NASA astrophysics program analysis groups held ahead of the American Astronomical Society meeting here, a scientist involved with Swift said preparations for the reboost mission remain on track for a June 1 launch.
“I have not seen any evidence of that slipping yet, so we are on target,” said Jamie Kennea, a research professor at Penn State University who is head of Swift’s science operations team.
A June launch would provide several months of margin. Kennea said current models project Swift’s altitude will fall below 300 kilometers — the point at which a reboost mission would no longer be feasible — sometime between mid-October 2026 and late January 2027.
However, while the reboost mission remains on schedule, schedule slips are always a possibility, particularly with a unique mission like this and with the lack of spaceflight experience by Katalyst.
Kennea said the Swift team is examining ways to reduce drag on the spacecraft and thereby extend its time in orbit if the reboost mission is delayed or if atmospheric density increases beyond current projections.
Most of the drag, he said, occurs during about a 20-minute segment of each orbit, when Swift passes through an atmospheric bulge on the sunward side of Earth. Mission controllers are reorienting the spacecraft during that period to reduce its cross-sectional area and thus minimize drag.
Engineers are also evaluating additional steps, such as slightly moving the solar panels away from the sun. “It’s hoped that, by doing this, we can guarantee that Swift will still be at the right altitude when the mission occurs,” he said.
Those measures would affect Swift’s science operations, including limiting its ability to point at specific targets during that 20-minute interval. “We believe that is a worthwhile trade to extend the lifetime of the Swift mission,” Kennea said.
He praised NASA’s decision to pursue the reboost effort. “This is a cheap mission,” he said, with NASA’s contract to Katalyst valued at $30 million. “This is a very good example of NASA both being amazingly fast and doing things cheaper.”
That speed was essential, said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, who spoke later in the session. “A year ago, we didn’t know Swift was deorbiting as soon as it ended up being,” he said. “We had to find programmatic solutions that got us to the launch pad as quickly as possible.”
To do so, NASA bypassed traditional procurement steps, such as issuing a request for information followed by a request for proposals, instead working with companies that already held technology demonstration contracts through NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Domagal-Goldman emphasized that this approach would not necessarily apply to future reboost efforts, such as potential missions to raise the orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope. “I don’t want to set a precedent for how we went about the Swift reboost effort,” he said. “If we do a Hubble reboost, I want to have something more intentional and open to competition.”
While the Swift reboost mission carries technical risk, Kennea argued that the risk to the spacecraft itself is limited. “It’s not without risk, but really, is there risk?” he said. If the mission fails, Swift would reenter Earth’s atmosphere as it would have without a reboost mission. NASA has determined there is no threat to people or property from surviving debris.
“What’s the worst that could happen if this doesn’t work?” he said. “So, I consider this to be zero risk.”
