NASA’s Swift telescope burns up over Indonesia, ending a 22-year mission
The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over North Sumatra on Wednesday, ending more than two decades of studying the universe’s most powerful explosions.
NASA’s 22-year-old Swift space telescope has plunged back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere over Indonesia and bringing an end to a mission that studied some of the universe’s most powerful explosions.
The US Space Force confirmed that the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered the atmosphere at 7:39am Eastern Time on Wednesday, 12:39pm GMT, over North Sumatra province, travelling at around 22 times the speed of sound, NASA said.
The observatory, which weighed about 1,452 kilograms, or roughly 3,200 pounds, was expected to be largely incinerated by frictional heat during re-entry, although NASA said some denser fragments could have survived. No damage or injuries on the ground were reported.
Swift was launched in November 2004, on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, on what was originally planned as a two-year study of gamma-ray bursts — the most intense explosions known in the universe — and exploding stars. It went on to operate for more than two decades.
During that extended life it observed more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts, using three telescopes working across different wavelengths, and became a versatile tool for astronomers studying cosmic explosions, supernovae and other violent events in deep space.
Its end had been hastened by intense solar activity in recent years, as the Sun reached the peak of its 11-year cycle in 2024. The resulting drag pulled Swift’s orbit lower until it could no longer compensate, and it officially stopped gathering scientific data on 20 October, after dropping to about 275 kilometres above Earth.
NASA had tried to save the observatory. In July it launched a rescue mission with Arizona-based start-up Katalyst Space, whose LINK robotic spacecraft, fitted with three arms, was meant to boost Swift to a higher orbit and extend its life. The rescue craft ran into propulsion trouble after launch and came crashing down in September, less than three months before Swift’s fall.
In its final weeks, mission scientists turned Swift’s instruments back on to collect data right up until the end, while a team at Penn State University, home to the observatory’s Mission Operations Center, sent the final kill-switch command on 20 October.
NASA had assessed the risk from falling debris as very low, estimating the chances of anyone on Earth being harmed at about one in 2,100, a figure that reflects older safety standards. Current orbital debris rules, updated in 2019, require uncontrolled re-entries to have an expected casualty risk below one in 10,000, a standard Swift, designed in an earlier era, was not built to meet.
With no established replacement waiting to take over its role, Swift’s fiery finale closes a chapter in space astronomy that lasted more than ten times its planned lifetime, leaving astronomers to draw on its archive of observations while they await the next generation of instruments to watch the sky for the universe’s brightest blasts.
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