Robotic spacecraft will attempt to stabilize NASA telescope’s orbit

News

September 25, 2025

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. Katalyst Space Technologies has secured a contract from NASA to raise the orbit of the space agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory; the observatory’s orbit is decaying faster than NASA had anticipated due to higher-than-expected atmopsheric drag.

According to an announcement from the company, Katalyst’s robotic servicing spacecraft will rendezvous with Swift and raise it to a higher altitude, thereby demonstrating a key capability for the future of space exploration and extending the Swift mission’s science lifetime.

Katalyst is set to receive $30 million to move forward with implementation under a Phase III award as an existing participant in NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, which is managed by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. 

NASA information describes the Swift mission — launched in 2004 — as that of exploring gamma-ray bursts, the universe’s most powerful explosions. Swift leads NASA’s fleet of space telescopes in studying changes in the high-energy universe. When a rapid, sudden event takes place in the cosmos, the Swift observatory ferries salient information to the space agency that allows other missions to then follow up to learn more about how the universe works. For more than 20 years, Swift has been an eye for NASA into new insights on these events, broadening the agency’s understanding of everything from exploding stars, stellar flares, and eruptions in active galaxies to comets and asteroids in our own solar system and high-energy lightning events on Earth.

NASA says that while the spacecraft’s low-Earth orbit has been decaying gradually, a normal occurrence for satellites over time, because of recent increases in the Sun’s activity, Swift is experiencing more atmospheric drag than anticipated, speeding up its orbital decay. While NASA could have allowed the observatory to reenter Earth’s atmosphere, as many missions do at end-of-life, Swift’s lowering orbit presents an opportunity to demonstrate and advance American spacecraft-servicing technology.

The overall Swift mission is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico), and Northrop Grumman Space Systems (Dulles, Virginia); additional partners include the U.K. Space Agency, University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory (both in England), the Brera Observatory (Italy), and the Italian Space Agency.