The U.S. Space Force says NASA’s Swift Observatory is likely to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on or around Friday after a rescue mission failed.
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An aging NASA telescope is expected to burn up after a failed attempt to bring it out of orbit, with the U.S. Space Force predicting the Swift Observatory will come crashing down on or around Friday.
The 1.5-ton telescope is expected to lose most of its material during reentry, but NASA says some denser-than-lead tungsten components and some mirror parts could survive and reach the ground.
Any surviving debris would most likely fall into the ocean, though a reentry zone includes parts of Africa, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.
NASA’s Brad Cenko said the mission’s chief scientist expects only a handful of pieces to endure reentry.
In an email, Pennsylvania State University astronomer John Nousek, who led the control team, said, “We’ve known this day would come since before Swift was launched. At least in low-Earth orbit, what goes up must come down. And that end is catastrophic.”
Nousek also said in another email, “Our fervent hope is that the lessons learned by the successes of Swift can be applied to new generations of space missions to accelerate our discoveries about the universe.”
Swift launched on Nov. 20, 2004, to search for some of the biggest explosions in the universe, including gamma ray bursts and supernovas.
The observatory’s primary “superpower” was its ability to swivel quickly—reflected in its name—toward erupting celestial events and respond to alerts.
NASA had previously considered Swift a first responder for other missions such as the Hubble and Webb telescopes, which would follow its alerts and conduct deeper investigations.
Intense solar activity over the past few years dragged Swift down faster than usual, and NASA hired Katalyst Space to mount a rush rescue about a year ago.
Katalyst’s three-armed robot, named Link, launched in July but ran into trouble and got no closer than 7 miles to 9 miles (12 km to 15 km) to Swift.
Link then plunged back to Earth in September.
Swift resumed observations once the rescue attempt was called off, but by late October the telescope was too low to remain steady, and its systems were shut down.
Swift’s final tally included more than 2,000 gamma ray bursts and 1,400 exploding stars, along with additional findings involving comets, asteroids and black holes.
The Space Force is tracking the telescope’s dwindling path as the mission ends.
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