Here’s how engineers plan to save the satellite sent to save NASA’s Swift mission

Screenshot from the video “NASA’s Swift Mission Gets a Boost” – NASA Goddard. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Katalyst Space / Northrop Grumman. Article by Stephen Clark. Ars Technica– August 1, 2026.

One week ago, more than 200 miles above the Earth, a refrigerator-size satellite making its way toward an attempted rescue of NASA’s $500 million Swift gamma-ray observatory suddenly spun out of control. It didn’t look good. The spacecraft, named Link, was rotating on multiple axes, rendering it unable to maintain a reliable communications link with the ground and complicating efforts to arrest the spin. Two of the satellite’s three reaction wheels, used for pointing, also stopped working. Through sporadic radio contact, engineers discovered a problem with some of the spacecraft’s cold gas thrusters used for finer attitude control. […]

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Video: NASA’s Swift Mission Gets a Boost – NASA Goddard.