More than 200 miles above Earth, a Katalyst Space Technologies satellite about the size of a refrigerator suddenly lost control a week ago. The equipment was intended to rescue NASA’s Swift gamma ray observatory, valued at 500 million dollars.
The situation of the device, called Link, was not favorable. It rotated on several axes, making reliable communication with the base impossible and making it difficult to stop the movement. Two of its three reaction wheels, used for steering, also stopped working. Sporadic radio contacts allowed engineers to identify a failure in the cold gas thrusters, which are essential for more precise attitude control.
The Link satellite was designed and operated by Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup specializing in space services. The company signed a $30 million contract with NASA to reach the Swift observatory, dock it and raise its orbit, preventing it from succumbing to aerodynamic drag and disintegrating in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Timing is crucial, as within a few months, Swift will be at too low an altitude for Katalyst to complete the rescue. This is the first time that NASA has hired a private company to carry out maintenance on one of its satellites, giving Katalyst less than a year to organize the mission. The Link satellite was launched on July 3, 2026, beginning the pursuit of Swift, and the operation continued as planned until July 26, 2026.
“When this occurred, it was during one of the non-communication passes,” Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee reported in an interview. “We were, immediately before, in a pretty stable configuration.”
Katalyst’s ground team, operating from a control center near Denver, United States, acted quickly to correct the problem and recover the Link satellite. The positive news was that the equipment’s other systems remained functional, including its power source, three xenon-powered electric thrusters, and the rendezvous and robotics hardware needed to capture the Swift.
How the Katalyst team is trying to stabilize the Link satellite
Lee, the chief executive of Katalyst, explained the team’s efforts to stabilize the spacecraft on August 1, 2026. The initial procedure involves using the satellite’s plasma engines to gradually reduce rotation. Although these engines are primarily designed for orbit raising, they are also effective for attitude control due to the ability to direct their thrust with a two-axis gimbal.
Link’s electric propulsion system is efficient but low-thrust, meaning it takes time to generate the necessary thrust and regain full control of the satellite’s steering.
“We were able to use the thrusters to point in the opposite direction to the rotation rate and thus influence the attitude control, which proved to be quite effective,” Lee said.
This method has shown satisfactory results. By August 1, 2026, the spacecraft had reduced its rotation rate by half, dropping from approximately 9 degrees per second to about 4 degrees per second. Those responsible for the mission hope to further reduce the rotation speed to optimize communication with the satellite.
“Once we are in a more stable configuration, with much higher bandwidth communication, we can use this to download all the important data about the condition of the spacecraft,” said Lee. “We know the states of the reaction wheels and thrusters, and our GNC team – guidance, navigation and control – has been working hard with NASA, essentially mapping out all the control algorithms to have an updated controller ready for when we can stabilize the spacecraft.”
Although Katalyst may eventually recover the satellite’s two inoperative reaction wheels, the team’s priority is to reestablish control. This will be done by loading a new algorithm to manage guidance through the combination of the single remaining reaction wheel and thrusters.
What may have caused the crash and how the systems reacted
Engineers have not yet identified the exact cause of the Link spacecraft emergency on July 26, 2026. It could have been an internal problem with the satellite or a collision with space debris. Lee said two cameras aboard the satellite will look for signs of damage once ground teams are able to stabilize it.
Regardless of the origin, the Katalyst mission control team lost contact with Link for more than 24 hours after it went into uncontrolled rotation. Then, the satellite restarted automatically, as per its security protocol.
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“This was a built-in failsafe logic that said, ‘Hey, if I don’t hear from anyone in 24 hours, there must be something wrong. I’m going to cycle the power, turn it on, and then turn it off again,'” Lee said. “It’s just part of the system. However, this shutdown mode is not ‘graceful’. Basically, it turns everything off, and that creates some secondary effects for sensitive systems like the reaction wheels.”
“Fundamentally, there was a large thermal spike resulting from this that overheated the upstream electronic circuits controlling the reaction wheels, which ultimately caused them to become inoperable,” Lee explained.
The issue of the spacecraft’s cold gas thrusters appears to be a “separate issue,” according to Lee. However, engineers do not yet have all the data to reach a definitive conclusion.
“These things happened all at once, so it’s difficult to delineate what contributed to creating the situation and what was a consequence of the situation, and that’s something we’re going to have to investigate with all the data,” Lee said.
Even given the challenges, Lee said Katalyst still plans to target Link to NASA’s Swift observatory, possibly by the end of August.
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“We are very committed to moving forward with this mission,” Lee assured. “We are working hand in hand with NASA. I just came out of a technical meeting with their control team where we are reviewing the algorithms. It appears that there is nothing stopping us from reestablishing three-axis control of the spacecraft with the remaining reaction wheel, with the remaining thrusters, as well as the electric propulsion.”
“It’s not the original way we expected to control the spacecraft, but it looks like we’ll have enough stability and controllability,” Lee added. “With this, we believe we can rendezvous with the Swift. We believe we can do things like inspect the Swift to within a few tens of meters. And at the moment, we haven’t made a formal assessment, but we believe that the capture of the Swift, an attempt to capture the Swift, is very likely.”