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WASHINGTON — The company that developed a spacecraft to boost the orbit of a NASA observatory says it is making progress in recovering from its own spacecraft’s problems.
In a social media post last week, Katalyst Space Technologies said it had slowed the spin of its Link spacecraft, which had entered what the company said on July 28 was a “multi-axis spin” because of technical issues encountered during post-launch commissioning.
“LINK was spinning at approximately 9 degrees per second when recovery operations began,” the company stated. “The team has since reduced the spacecraft’s body rate to 1.47 degrees per second, where it will remain while the team prepares for the next phase of the mission.”
Controllers used one of the spacecraft’s electric thrusters to slow the spin, a process the company said consumed less than 100 grams of fuel. The company has not disclosed how much fuel remains on the spacecraft, but it said it was conserving propellant for later phases of the mission.
Katalyst said it was planning to upload a “significant flight software update” in the coming days to allow for attitude control in the spacecraft’s current configuration. That will allow the company’s engineers to restore full attitude control of the spacecraft and resume plans to head toward NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.
The company has not said more about what caused Link to lose attitude control weeks after its July 3 launch on a Pegasus rocket. Two of the three reaction wheels on the spacecraft were not functioning after the incident, and its reaction control system thrusters were only partially working.
Current plans call for Katalyst to reach Swift in late August, a few weeks later than planned. Link will attempt to grapple Swift and use its thrusters to raise the observatory’s decaying orbit.
The $30 million mission is the first attempt by Katalyst, a satellite servicing company, to grapple another satellite and boost it. NASA has acknowledged the mission is a high-risk one, but offers benefits to both the agency and the broader space industry.
Without Link, Swift is expected to deorbit late this year or early next year, as the 22-year-old spacecraft lacks the ability to raise its own orbit. The reboost must start before Swift reaches an altitude of about 300 kilometers, a threshold it is expected to cross no earlier than October. Its altitude was just below 350 kilometers as of Aug. 9.