Space This Week: Swift Goes Dark as Vulcan and Starship Line Up

The last week of October brought one ending and two comebacks. NASA closed the book on one of its most productive space telescopes, while United Launch Alliance and SpaceX lined up the flights that will define November. Here is what changed, in plain terms.

Swift goes dark after 21 years

NASA announced on Friday, 23 October, that it has ended the mission of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, according to Space.com. Launched in November 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions in the universe, Swift was designed to work for two years. It lasted more than twenty.

Its problem was simple: Swift has no thrusters, so drag from the upper atmosphere slowly pulled it down. In September 2025 NASA paid Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies 30 million dollars to grab it with robotic arms and push it higher. Katalyst's LINK spacecraft launched on 3 July 2026, but about three weeks later it suffered propulsion and reaction-wheel problems and began to spin. It came within 12 to 15 km of Swift and photographed it, but never made the capture. LINK fell back to Earth on 25 September.

• Swift collected its last science data on 20 October 2026.
• It observed more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and more than 1,400 supernovae.
• NASA credits it with about 7,000 published scientific papers.
• The observatory is expected to re-enter the atmosphere in the coming weeks.

Next up: Vulcan and Starship

ULA will fly Vulcan again on 13 November, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine, ending a grounding that followed a solid rocket booster anomaly on 12 February during the Space Force's USSF-87 mission. That mission still reached orbit. The return flight carries satellites for Amazon's Leo broadband constellation and uses an improved booster nozzle. The stakes are high: ULA and SpaceX are the only providers certified for the most sensitive national security launches, and the Space Force moved four missions to SpaceX during the pause.

SpaceX, meanwhile, is targeting November for Starship Flight 15, the first flight since the vehicle reached orbit in September. Elon Musk said during the company's third-quarter results presentation on 20 October that SpaceX will try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and, for the first time, the Starship upper stage with the launch tower, as reported by NewSpace Economy. President Gwynne Shotwell said she expects FAA approval, but no licence or launch day has been announced.

Catching a booster made reuse look possible. Catching the ship would make it look routine.

• 13 November: Vulcan returns to flight from Cape Canaveral with Amazon Leo satellites.
• November, date to be confirmed: Starship Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, with a two-stage catch attempt.
• Coming weeks: Swift's re-entry, which closes one of NASA's longest-running astrophysics missions.