{"id":234520,"date":"2026-04-03T02:04:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/swift-spacecraft-reorientation-buys-time-for-reboost-mission"},"modified":"2026-04-03T02:04:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:04:04","slug":"swift-spacecraft-reorientation-buys-time-for-reboost-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/swift-spacecraft-reorientation-buys-time-for-reboost-mission","title":{"rendered":"Swift spacecraft reorientation buys time for reboost mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/swift-spacecraft-reorientation-buys-time-for-reboost-mission.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 NASA modified operations of an astrophysics spacecraft in a decaying orbit to buy more time for a mission later this year that will attempt to raise its orbit.<\/p>\n<p>NASA announced in September <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/nasa-awards-katalyst-space-contract-to-reboost-swift-spacecraft\/\">it selected Katalyst Space to develop a spacecraft that will rendezvous with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and raise its orbit<\/a>. Swift, launched in 2004, is in a decaying orbit, and the $30 million reboost mission would keep the spacecraft from reentering.<\/p>\n<p>At an astronomy conference in early January, Jamie Kennea, a research professor at Penn State University who is head of Swift\u2019s science operations team, said <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/nasa-works-to-extend-swifts-life-ahead-of-reboost-mission\/\">models projected that Swift\u2019s orbit would decay below 300 kilometers, the minimum altitude for the reboost mission, sometime between mid-October 2026 and January 2027<\/a>. That provided several months of margin for Katalyst\u2019s Link spacecraft, scheduled to launch as soon as June 1 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 NASA modified operations of an astrophysics spacecraft in a decaying orbit to buy more time for a mission later this year that will attempt to raise its orbit. NASA announced in September it selected Katalyst Space to develop a spacecraft that will rendezvous with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and raise its orbit. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}