LINK Spacecraft Recovery Progressing for NASA’s Swift Boost 

Teams are preparing to take the next major recovery steps for Katalyst Space’s robotic spacecraft LINK in orbit. During the last week, they’ve successfully reduced the spin of LINK, which is designed to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbital altitude.

LINK originally was in a multi-axis spin rotating at about 9 degrees per second, which resulted in sporadic communications and impeded LINK’s progress toward Swift. Using a series of burns from one of LINK’s electric propulsion thrusters, the Katalyst team now has slowed that spin to about 1.47 degrees per second. Katalyst plans to keep LINK at that spin rate as it proceeds with next steps for the mission. This includes uploading a flight software update in the coming days with new attitude controllers designed to maintain LINK’s stability in its current configuration. These updates would allow LINK to begin maneuvering to align with Swift’s orbit. 

Learn more from Katalyst, and monitor NASA’s Swift blog for continued updates: 

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift