NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a $500 million gamma-ray telescope launched in 2004, is rapidly falling out of orbit. NASA has commissioned Katalyst Space's Link spacecraft to rendezvous with Swift and perform a first-of-its-kind reboost mission. Link's launch is targeting June 1 with docking on or around July 4. The reboost requires Swift to stay above 300 km, so it's a race against time - any substantial delays will cause the telescope to be lost.
On February 11 the team took the extraordinary step of halting science operations and reorienting Swift to cut atmospheric drag, buying back 8 weeks of precious margin to save the mission. In the public interest we are publishing continuous lifetime forecasts here - a live view of the race to save Swift.
These data and plots are generated by Leonid's Satellite Lifetime Monitoring service, which combines real-time satellite tracking data with the latest space weather forecasts. Our industry-leading prediction engine is validated against six decades of spaceflight. New predictions are generated every 6 hours, ensuring rapid response to solar storms and changing atmospheric conditions.
