Commercial Spacecraft Rescue Sets Template for NASA's Aging Observatory Fleet

NASA's Swift Boost mission launched July 3 to deploy Katalyst Space's LINK spacecraft, a robotic servicer designed to dock with and reboost the aging Swift Observatory to a higher orbit. The $30 million rescue extends the 20-year-old gamma-ray observatory's life by roughly a decade. Success would establish the first commercial model for servicing active science satellites — a template potentially applicable across NASA's fleet of aging instruments.