One of NASA's leading space telescopes fell back to Earth on Wednesday, closing out 22 years of work studying the universe's most violent explosions, CP24 reports. The U.S. Space Force confirmed that the Swift Observatory reentered the atmosphere near Indonesia after tracking its steadily decaying orbit.
The end came less than three months after a privately built rescue attempt fell apart. NASA had contracted a commercial firm to raise Swift's altitude, but the effort failed when the company's robotic spacecraft ran into problems after launching in July and crashed back to Earth in September, according to CP24.
It was not immediately clear how much of the 1.5-ton observatory was consumed by atmospheric heating. NASA expected that some of the spacecraft's denser components would survive the fall.
Why it matters
Swift was never meant to last this long. The observatory launched in 2004 on a mission designed to run two years, with a focus on gamma-ray bursts and exploding stars. Instead it kept operating for roughly eleven times its planned lifespan, cataloguing thousands of these events.
Its value lay in speed. Swift functioned as a first responder for the wider astronomy community, flagging bursts quickly so that other, more powerful telescopes could swing around and study the same events in greater depth. That role made it a fixture of multi-observatory campaigns rather than a standalone instrument.
The reentry also illustrates a growing operational problem for satellite operators: solar activity over the past few years has thickened the upper atmosphere, dragging down spacecraft faster than predicted. Swift's orbit was worn down by exactly that effect, CP24 reports.
A rescue that arrived too late
The attempt to save Swift was always a long shot. NASA brought in a private company, Katalyst Space, to assemble an orbit-boosting mission on a compressed timeline. The plan relied on a three-armed robotic craft intended to latch onto the observatory and push it higher.
That craft launched in July but encountered trouble and came down in September, leaving Swift without a way to counteract the atmospheric drag pulling it downward. Wednesday's reentry followed within months.
The failure is notable because it tested whether commercial partners can mount rapid-response servicing missions — a capability NASA is now weighing for a far more famous telescope.
Hubble is next on the list
NASA is now asking industry how it might intervene on behalf of the Hubble Space Telescope, whose orbit is likewise being eroded by solar storms. Hubble launched in 1990, and recent analyses suggest it will fall back to Earth by the middle of the 2030s, CP24 reports.
The agency is soliciting proposals from private companies on whether and how they could lift Hubble's orbit, modernize its instruments, or steer it into a controlled reentry — or attempt all three. Any such mission would have to take place by 2032.
Unlike the hurried arrangement for Swift, NASA has more room to consider its choices for Hubble, said Nicky Fox, the agency's science mission chief, according to CP24.
"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."
The contrast between the two cases is stark. Swift's rescue was improvised under time pressure and did not succeed. Hubble's future is being planned years in advance, with a menu of possible outcomes that includes deliberately bringing the telescope down rather than saving it.
What to watch
NASA has not set a deadline for industry responses on Hubble, but the 2032 cutoff for any servicing mission sets the practical clock. How the agency structures that solicitation — and whether it favors a boost, an upgrade, a controlled deorbit, or a combination — will signal how much life it believes the 36-year-old telescope has left.
