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A private rescue spacecraft is having troubles of its own in Earth orbit.
LINK, a satellite built and operated by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies, launched July 3 on a daring and unprecedented mission: Rendezvous with NASA's Swift space telescope and boost the observatory to a higher orbit before it falls out of the sky.
About three weeks after launch, however, LINK started spinning at an unexpected rate, a problem that caused a temporary communications dropout and a reset of its satellite platform. And two of LINK's three orientation-controlling reaction wheels stopped working.
