Katalyst's LINK Reaches Orbit to Rescue Swift, Airbus Books €51M Aeolus-2 Start, Congress Members Disclose First SpaceX Buys

Katalyst Space's LINK servicing spacecraft reached low Earth orbit on July 3 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL, beginning what NASA calls a high-risk, high-reward attempt to grapple and reboost the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory before atmospheric drag forces reentry later this year. Katalyst delivered the 425-kilogram spacecraft within nine months of a $30 million contract award last September, repurposing hardware originally built for a 2027 NEXUS servicing demo.

The company will spend two weeks on checkouts, then two to three weeks surveying Swift to confirm grapple points on a satellite never designed for on-orbit servicing. It was also the final scheduled flight of the air-launched Pegasus.

ESA signed an initial €51 million ($58.3 million) contract with Airbus Defence and Space to begin work on Aeolus-2, the operational successor to the 2018 wind-lidar demonstrator, targeting a 2034 launch and adding an aerosol instrument alongside a lidar roughly twice as powerful as the original. Eumetsat will incorporate the data into operational forecasts. On the capital side, Hongqing Technology, Landspace's satellite affiliate, raised 1.3 billion yuan ($191 million) in a round backed by the investment arms of all five big Chinese state banks, taking total funding above $368 million as it builds toward the 10,000-satellite Honghu-3 filing.

In Washington, Reps. Dan Meuser and Gil Cisneros disclosed the first known congressional SpaceX purchases following the June 12 IPO, with Meuser's dependent buying $15,001 to $50,000 on June 15 and Cisneros disclosing a $1,001 to $15,000 purchase on June 18. Separately, a GAO review of 13 Space Force programs flagged a roughly $340 million payload overrun on OPIR geostationary orbit (GEO) and continued uncertainty around its Vulcan-assigned launch, while NASA and the Small Business Administration signed an SBIC-linked agreement steering at least 60% of participating fund capital into seven aerospace focus areas.