The resulting spacecraft, called LINK, launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in July aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. Katalyst chose the air-launched Pegasus because it best fit the mission's orbital requirements and tight schedule.

LINK reached space and completed initial checkouts. Then problems emerged: intermittent communications losses and faults in the system that controls the spacecraft's orientation in space. After round-the-clock troubleshooting by both teams, NASA and Katalyst agreed to scale back the mission. LINK would no longer try to grab or boost Swift. Instead, it would run a series of technology demonstrations aimed at strengthening the U.S. commercial servicing industry.

Those demonstrations included exercising LINK's xenon-powered propulsion system—xenon being a gas commonly used as fuel in electric thrusters—and its three robotic arms, designed to give the spacecraft flexibility in choosing where it could safely grapple Swift. NASA formally ended its involvement on Sept. 3. LINK burned up in the atmosphere on Sept. 25.

"LINK was built to take on a problem that did not have an easy solution," said Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space. "This was an ambitious mission on an aggressive timeline. While we did not accomplish every objective we set out to achieve, in less than a year we went from mission concept to launching and operating the first commercial space robot. This is a foundation we can build on."

New ways of working

Science missions like Swift typically take years to develop and decades to operate. The boost attempt forced something different: an agile form of project management new to NASA. Swift team members in the Space Science Mission Operations (SSMO) group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, worked with Katalyst to build milestones and approval processes that balanced speed against the best chance of success. NASA's Engineering and Safety Center provided advice during integration and testing.

"Katalyst was committed to leveraging NASA's deep experience to give themselves the best possible chance of successfully achieving the unprecedented challenge we gave them," said Russell Carpenter, a project manager in SSMO at NASA Goddard. "Missions like these, where public-private teams work tenaciously to overcome obstacles, are an inspiration to the world, reminding us that striving for the near impossible brings out what is exceptional in all of us."

Buying time from the ground

While engineers raced to prepare LINK, flight controllers at Swift's Mission Operations Center at Penn State in University Park, Pennsylvania, worked to keep the observatory aloft. Normally, they upload daily plans telling Swift which cosmic objects to observe. In December 2025, they began replacing about 25% of those science targets with sky positions chosen to minimize drag. By February, they had switched entirely to this drag-reducing pointing strategy.

The constraints were tight. Pointing too close to Earth, the moon or the sun risked overheating the observatory's instruments. Pointing in the most streamlined orientation tilted Swift too far toward the atmosphere, where particles could strike the telescopes and degrade future observations. The team found a compromise that held Swift above the critical altitude for several months.

"Even though Swift was not executing pointed science observations from mid-February to late August, we nonetheless continued Penn State's history of innovative space research and operations, pioneering new methods to minimize drag experienced by the spacecraft," said John Nousek, the mission director and professor of astronomy and astrophysics in Penn State's Eberly College of Science. "These changes bought valuable time for the boost mission and can be carried forward for future NASA missions."

"We're grateful to all our collaborators for the incredible amount of time and dedication they've put into the boost mission," said S. Bradley Cenko, Swift's principal investigator at NASA Goddard. "When Neil Gehrels, Swift's namesake, designed the observatory, nothing like it had ever launched. He would have celebrated that this boost effort was part of Swift's legacy, that it allowed NASA to try something new and daring even though the outcome wasn't guaranteed. That's how we explore the universe—as a team, learning from each other, constantly pushing forward."