Listen to this article
Estimated 2 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
One of NASA’s premier space telescopes plunged to Earth on Wednesday, ending its 22-year investigation of the universe’s biggest explosions.
The Swift Observatory’s demise came less than three months after a long-shot rescue mission failed.
The U.S. Space Force confirmed Swift’s reentry near Indonesia after tracking its sinking orbit, the result of intense solar activity in the past few years.
NASA hired a private company to whip together an orbit-boosting effort, but Katalyst Space’s three-armed robotic craft ran into trouble following its July launch and came crashing down in September.
It was not immediately known how much of the nearly one and a half tonne spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere. NASA anticipated that some of the denser pieces would survive.
Swift rocketed into orbit in 2004 on what was expected to be a two-year study of gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. It observed thousands of them over a mission that lasted 11 times longer than planned, serving as a first responder for other telescopes that could probe deeper.
Swift’s X-Ray Telescope captured the afterglow of gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A about an hour after it was first detected. The bright rings form as a result of X-rays scattered from otherwise unobservable dust layers within our galaxy that lie in the direction of the burst. (NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore, University of Leicester)
NASA is gauging industry interest in mounting a rescue mission for another observatory whose orbit is being chipped away by solar storms: the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched in 1990, Hubble is expected to come crashing down by the mid-2030s, according to recent analyses.
The space agency is looking for input from private companies about the possibility of boosting Hubble’s orbit, upgrading its systems, guiding it to a controlled reentry — or all three. Any such mission would need to happen by 2032.
Unlike the rush job with Swift, the space agency has more time to explore options for saving Hubble, says Nicky Fox, NASA’s science mission chief.
“Hubble still has important science ahead of it,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. “And we should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible.
