Most TriStars were scrapped long ago. One is still working. Stargazer, a 52-year-old Lockheed L-1011 that began life carrying Air Canada passengers, now carries a rocket under its belly, climbs to about 40,000 feet and lets it go. In July 2026 it did exactly that over the Pacific, on a mission to rescue a NASA space telescope.

A post going round Instagram tells the story, and it gets almost everything right. Here is the aircraft, the rocket it carries, and what happened on that last mission.

From Air Canada to Rocket Carrier

The aircraft first flew on 22 February 1974 and went into service with Air Canada the following month as C-FTNJ. It spent 18 years as an airliner, with a short lease to Air Lanka in 1982. In May 1992 Orbital Sciences bought it to replace the NASA B-52 that had dropped the first Pegasus rockets. Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge, England, converted it into a launch platform, and it became N140SC, Stargazer, named after a ship in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It dropped its first Pegasus XL on 27 June 1994.

In 2010 it was re-engined with Rolls-Royce RB211-524 turbofans in place of the original RB211-22s. Orbital merged into Orbital ATK in 2015, which Northrop Grumman bought in 2018, and Stargazer came with it. Beyond Pegasus, the aircraft has also been chartered for research and flight-test work.

How a Pegasus Launch Works

Pegasus is a three-stage, solid-fuel rocket with a small delta wing, about 17.6 metres long. Stargazer carries it under the fuselage to its release point, usually over the ocean, climbs to roughly 39,000 to 40,000 feet and drops it. The rocket falls clear for about five seconds before its first stage ignites, then pulls up and climbs to orbit. Launching from altitude means the rocket starts above most of the atmosphere and can be sent from wherever the aircraft can fly, which is why Pegasus has launched from Florida, California, Spain and the Marshall Islands.

The Instagram caption puts the payload at roughly 1,000 pounds to low Earth orbit. That is about right: Pegasus XL can lift about 450 kg to a 200 km orbit. It is small by today’s standards, and as larger and cheaper rockets arrived, Pegasus flights became rare. Before 2026 the last one was in June 2021.

The Swift Rescue Attempt

In 2026 Pegasus had one more job. NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, was sinking. Increased solar activity had thickened the upper atmosphere, and drag had pulled Swift down from about 600 km to under 380 km. In September 2025 NASA picked Katalyst Space Technologies to try something new: a robotic spacecraft called LINK that would fly up to Swift, grab it and push it back into a higher orbit.

LINK went up on the 46th Pegasus flight. Stargazer took off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands and released the rocket at 40,000 feet at 8:36 p.m. local time on 2 July 2026, 3 July in UTC. The launch worked. The rescue did not. During commissioning a fault put LINK into a multi-axis spin and left it with only one of its three reaction wheels. Engineers slowed the spin, but holding the spacecraft steady with thrusters used up too much propellant. On 19 August NASA and Katalyst called off the capture. LINK came within about 12 to 15 km of Swift, tested its robotic arms, and re-entered the atmosphere on 25 September. Swift is now expected to re-enter before the end of 2026.

Why the TriStar Became Rare

Lockheed built 250 L-1011s between 1968 and 1984. The programme was nearly killed when Rolls-Royce, which was developing the new RB211 engine for it, went into receivership in February 1971, halting final assembly. The British government rescued the engine maker, but the delay let McDonnell Douglas’s DC-10 reach airlines about a year earlier. The TriStar entered service with Eastern Air Lines in April 1972, never made money, and was Lockheed’s last commercial airliner. The last scheduled passenger flights with the type were flown by Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano in May 2008. We tell the full story in Le jet génial que Rolls-Royce a failli détruire.

What the Viral Post Gets Right

Nearly everything. Stargazer was delivered to Air Canada in 1974 and bought by Orbital Sciences in 1992; it carries Pegasus to about 40,000 feet; Pegasus XL lifts roughly 1,000 pounds to low orbit; Northrop Grumman operates it; and in July 2026 it launched a Pegasus XL from the Marshall Islands on the Swift mission. Lockheed did build 250 TriStars, the RB211 delays and the DC-10’s head start did hurt the programme, and scheduled passenger service ended in 2008.

Two details are worth adding. The caption says the July flight was “a mission involving” Swift, which undersells it: it launched a spacecraft meant to rescue Swift, and that rescue failed. And the claim that Stargazer is the only L-1011 still flying is widely repeated and appears to be true, though even Northrop Grumman has put it more cautiously, saying it may be the last airworthy TriStar. The Swift Boost launch may also turn out to have been Pegasus’s last.

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Sources: Wikipedia, Stargazer (aircraft), Lockheed L-1011 TriStar and Swift boost mission; NASASpaceFlight.com (June 2026); Via Satellite (6 July 2026); NASA Science Swift blog (June–September 2026); SpacePolicyOnline (August 2026); Katalyst Space Technologies (September 2026); Northrop Grumman.