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NASA gives up on trying to rescue the Swift telescope
Plans to rescue NASA’s Swift Observatory satellite from falling into Earth’s atmosphere are seemingly dead in the water. The agency and Katalyst Space announced yesterday that the Link spacecraft will no longer capture or boost the Swift telescope to a higher altitude due to an ongoing “attitude control issue,” but will instead conduct rendezvous and proximity operations to collect data for future space exploration. “We knew this was a high-risk, high-reward mission – a first-of-its kind attempt, developed on an unprecedented timeline driven by the Sun’s activity,” said NASA astrophysics director Shawn Domagal-Goldman. “We were all hoping for more science from Swift. But we knew the takeaways from this mission would be worthwhile either way, and we have gained so much through the series of accomplishments up to this point.” NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts. While only planned for a two year mission, it later came to be used as a general-purpose multi-wavelength observatory, but a recent increase in solar activity has pushed its orbit lower. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the mission update that this “is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting.” Katalyst was awarded a $30 million contract in September last year to carry out plans to boost the Swift telescope back into a higher orbit, which is a lot of money to spend on an ultimately fruitless rescue mission. Katalyst launched the Link spacecraft on July 3rd, but started experiencing its own issues at the end of July. Without additional intervention, NASA now expects Swift to re-enter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year.
The Verge 16 hours ago
NASA Calls Off Mission To Rescue The Falling Swift Observatory
Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft will still rendezvous with the telescope but will no longer tug it to a higher orbit. NASA The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere later this year, after NASA has aborted the mission meant to tug it back up to a higher orbit. NASA has announced that Katalyst Space's LINK spacecraft will no longer dock with the satellite and boost it to a higher altitude as planned. The agency blamed it on LINK's ongoing attitude control issue, which started in late July. If you'll recall, NASA reported at the time that the spacecraft was having problems managing its orientation in orbit, causing it to spin helplessly. That led to sporadic communications with the spacecraft. There was also some loss in functionality to LINK's thruster system. NASA and Katalyst were still optimistic last month that the spacecraft could accomplish its goal, but things have clearly changed since then. Katalyst had less than a year to design a spacecraft for the Swift Boost mission, which launched in early July. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said it was a "high-risk, high-reward mission" mission from the start. It was a first-of-its-kind attempt, and the team had very little time to try and rescue the Swift telescope, whose orbit is rapidly decaying due to an increase in solar activity in recent years. NASA's SWIFT observatory launched in 2004 to study gamma ray bursts, but astronomers are now using it for several other purposes. The agency has been relying on it to obtain critical information quickly when a sudden cosmic event takes places. This mission was supposed to add a decade or so to its life. Going forward, NASA says it will prioritize finding "new options to react rapidly to cosmic events," but it will use current missions to help fill the gap for now. While LINK will no longer tug the Swift observatory to a higher orbit, it will still attempt to re
Engadget 19 hours ago
NASA calls off mission to rescue Swift gamma-ray observatory
NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies announced Wednesday they are giving up on a robotic mission to rescue the Swift gamma-ray telescope before it falls out of orbit. The rescue satellite, named Link, launched July 3 on a journey to fly up to NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, capture it with three robotic arms, and boost its orbit high enough to escape a looming reentry. Link is about the size of a refrigerator, with two power-generating solar arrays and three xenon-fueled electric thrusters to send Swift into a safer, higher orbit. Katalyst, the startup leading the Swift rescue effort, said Wednesday that “ongoing attitude control issues” will prevent the Link satellite from completing its rescue mission. The spacecraft is still alive, and Katalyst said it will make the most of Link’s remaining capacity, which may still allow it to get near enough to Swift for a demonstration of the satellite’s close-in navigation system. “While the mission will not have the ending we originally intended, NASA and Katalyst are assessing what milestones remain ahead,” Katalyst said in a statement. “We will continue working to extract technical and operational value from the spacecraft.” It was a lot to ask The Swift rescue mission was always risky. NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract less than a year ago to build and launch the Link satellite. NASA said Katalyst had to launch the rescue mission by this summer in order to reach Swift before it falls back into Earth’s atmosphere and burns up. “NASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did with this mission,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting.” NASA gave Katalyst a remarkably tight schedule. It usually takes several years to ready a first-of-its-kind satellite for launch. Katalyst did it in nine months. The timeline forced h
Ars Technica yesterday
A SpaceX rocket carved out a crater on the moon as long as a bowling lane with ‘butterfly wing’ streaks
A NASA spacecraft circling the moon is providing the sharpest views yet of the crater carved by a crashing SpaceX rocket. The space agency released before-and-after photos of the impact area on Tuesday. The Falcon rocket’s upper stage plowed into the moon at 5,400 mph (8,700 kph) on Aug. 5 after drifting through space for more than a year. It launched a pair of private moon landers with experiments and even a tiny rover in 2025 as part of NASA’s push to commercialize lunar exploration. Based on these new photos by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the fresh crater appears to be 60 feet (18 meters) across and less than 10 feet (3 meters) deep, according to scientists. Dark and bright streaks are clearly visible emanating like butterfly wings from the crater. The darker lines represent excavated material that was close to the surface and shaped by eons of solar wind, cosmic rays and micrometeorite strikes. The brighter rays indicate fresh rocks and dirt that were hurled from farther down. The spacecraft photographed the crater a week after the collision from 60 miles (96 kilometers) up, while zooming along at one mile per second. Flight controllers had to tilt the spacecraft so its cameras pointed toward the impact scene. The orbiter completes a lunar polar orbit every two hours, as the moon rotates beneath. It took six days before the crash scene came into view. South Korea’s Danuri spacecraft was first on the scene to beam back photos. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been orbiting the moon since 2009, serving as NASA’s up-close eyes as the space agency works to return astronauts to the lunar surface. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Fortune Daily breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms Fortune’s trusted reporting into ac
Fortune 2 days ago
U.S. GAO - Priority Open Recommendations: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Skip to Highlights Highlights What GAO Found In August 2025, GAO identified three priority recommendations for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Since then, NASA has not implemented any priority recommendations. In July 2026, GAO identified an additional priority recommendation, bringing the total to four. GAO is highlighting the following three areas that warrant timely and focused attention: Monitoring program costs, Managing cybersecurity risks, and Using federal contracting metrics. Addressing GAO's recommendations in these areas would enhance NASA's efforts to improve transparency into Artemis program and mission costs; help NASA understand its cybersecurity risks by performing an organization-wide cybersecurity risk assessment to identify and mitigate the highest priority cyber threats across the enterprise; and position NASA to make more informed management decisions and potentially save millions of dollars in its procurements. Taking action to implement all of GAO's open priority recommendations would help enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of operations across NASA. Why GAO Did This Study Priority open recommendations are the GAO recommendations that warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies because their implementation could save large amounts of money; improve congressional and/or executive branch decision-making on major issues; eliminate mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or make progress toward addressing a high risk or duplication issue, among other benefits. Since 2015, GAO has sent letters to selected agencies to highlight the importance of implementing such recommendations. For more information, contact Timothy J. DiNapoli at [email protected].` Full Report
GAO reports 2 days ago
NASA Images Show Crater On The Moon Caused By SpaceX Falcon 9 Crash
They were taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines In the early hours of August 5, the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the lunar surface. Now, NASA has released a series of images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) from August 11 to 12, showing a new crater on the moon caused by the wandering rocket. To capture the images, NASA engineers had to tilt the spacecraft sideways so its cameras would point downward as it passed 60 miles above the crater. Specifically, they used LRO's Narrow-Angle Camera, which can see features on the lunar surface as small as three feet wide. It wasn't an easy feat, as the spacecraft flew from pole to pole every two hours at a speed of 1 mile per second, while the Moon rotated on its axis underneath. NASA had to wait for the LRO and the crash site to align, and that took six days. The agency did, however, release before-and-after photos, which you can see on the official site. Meanwhile, the photos above show the crash site from different angles. The darker streak radiating out of the crater is made of older materials from near the surface: Dust and rocks whose colors and components have already been altered by years of exposure to solar winds and cosmic rays. The lighter materials near the rim came from deeper underground. Independent astronomer Bill Grey first drew attention to a rocket on a collision course with the Moon in April. He used orbit-computing software to figure out where and when the rocket was crashing. Grey and his colleagues also used a physics simulator to analyze the data, predicting that the upper stage wouldn't make much of an impact. The rocket was 39 feet long and 13 feet wide, weighing around 4,000 kilograms. It slammed into the Moon at 5,400 mph and, based on NASA's calculations, created a crater 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep. The Falcon 9 rocket in this crash came from the January 15, 2025 Blue Ghost mission, which carried two lunar landers to
Engadget 2 days ago
The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China's space program
The mission will pack a punch: It contains a lunar orbiter with high-resolution cameras and other sophisticated tools, a lunar lander, a lunar rover, and a mini-hopper of a probe. Although the lander’s mass has not been disclosed publicly, it is several times larger than the NASA-backed probes that have recently landed on the Moon, such as Firefly’s Blue Ghost. But what is most notable about Chang’e 7 is where the probe is going. It will land near one of the most compelling regions of the Moon, Shackleton Crater, very nearly at the South Pole. Much of the lunar surface is pretty barren, but the South Pole, and Shackleton Crater in particular, offers some of the most coveted real estate there. This is because the high rims of the crater create permanently shadowed regions known as “cold traps,” where it’s thought that water (in the form of ice, of course) and other useful materials may have accumulated over billions of years. In all of NASA’s and China’s plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the South Pole of the Moon matter the most. The impact of all this Humans have been flying missions to the Moon since 1959, when the Soviet Union’s Luna 1 spacecraft passed within several thousand kilometers of the lunar surface. But in all that time, across more than 100 successes and failures, no spacecraft has ever landed at the South Pole of the Moon. So we’re faced with the prospect of a Chinese rover rolling around this most interesting but heretofore unexplored region of the Moon. Undoubtedly, there will be stunning images and videos. And the rover and hopper, if successful, will provide the best available data on the presence and prevalence of water there.
Ars Technica 3 days ago
OneGov savings balloon to over $1.6B as agencies weigh future of AI in contracting
Douglas Rissing/Getty Images By Christian Robles | August 13, 2026 The General Services Administration has already agreed to extend some OneGov deals and is working on brokering new ones, according to an official. GSA Artificial Intelligence NASA The OneGov program has saved the federal government about $1.62 billion — including about $1.4 billion through limited-time discounts on artificial intelligence — since its inception, a General Services Administration official said Thursday.“That number may not capture the full impact because some agencies might have used the OneGov pricing to negotiate pricing on their own contracts outside of GSA’s [involvement],” Birgit Smeltzer, director of the agency’s Office of IT Products, said at the GovCIO Federal AI Forum. Indeed, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is one example of an agency that has negotiated technology discounts beyond OneGov. But federal agencies only have limited time access to discounted software through the OneGov program.Smeltzer said some of the original equipment manufacturers have already agreed to extend the duration of their OneGov discounts or are working on forging new offers. She did not say which manufacturers have already promised to reup discounts or when GSA would announce them.“Some of the [original equipment manufacturers] have already agreed to extend some of the limited time offers, and some are looking at producing new offers for us,” she said.GSA officials previously said they want manufacturers to extend OneGov deals as they look to become direct contractors on the Multiple Award Schedule. Officials have also said they want the OneGov initiative to extend beyond technology and software. Smeltzer forecasted that even though OneGov prices “will eventually increase, the offers have already created significant value for agencies.”“Leveraging the OneGov has been tremendous in order to really prove value,” said Geoffrey Sage, director of the enterprise services and analysis divisi
Nextgov August 13, 2026

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