NASA’s Swift Observatory is expected to plunge back to Earth next week after a failed rescue effort left the aging telescope drifting progressively lower.
The U.S. Space Force predicts the telescope will come crashing down on or around Friday.
Most of the 1 ½-ton telescope should incinerate upon descent, though dense tungsten components and mirror elements could survive reentry, according to NASA's Brad Cenko, the mission’s chief scientist.
Any surviving wreckage will likely plunge into the ocean, but portions of Africa, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America remain inside the reentry zone. The Space Force continues to monitor the craft's trajectory.
The imminent destruction marks the end of 22 years in orbit for Swift, which launched on Nov. 20, 2004. The telescope was tasked with searching for the universe's most violent events, including supernovas and gamma ray bursts.
"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," said Pennsylvania State University’s John Nousek, an astronomer who led the control team.
Swift emergency rescue mission failed
Strong solar activity in recent years accelerated the spacecraft's orbital decay. NASA hired Katalyst Space a year ago for an emergency rescue, but the company’s three-armed robot, Link, suffered issues after launching in July. Link got no closer than 7 miles to 9 miles (12 kilometers to 15 kilometers) before falling back to Earth in September.
Swift briefly returned to operations once the rescue attempt ended, discovering additional gamma ray bursts. By late October, the telescope was too low to stay steady for observations, leading ground controllers to turn off its systems.
The spacecraft logged more than 2,000 gamma ray bursts and 1,400 exploding stars, along with comets, asteroids, and black holes. Its key feature was the ability to pivot swiftly toward erupting space events.
NASA utilized Swift to alert telescopes such as Hubble and Webb so they could conduct deeper investigations. Astronomers are now working on methods to fill the operational void.
"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," Nousek said in an email.
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