Atmospheric Reentry Set for Wednesday as NASA’s Swift Telescope Fails to Recover
NASA’s Swift space telescope will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, November 4, after nearly 22 years in orbit. The controlled destruction comes after an ambitious commercial rescue mission failed earlier this year, leaving the aging observatory unable to fight the friction of the upper atmosphere.
The Aerospace Corporation estimates the reentry will occur around 10:30 AM Swedish time, though forecasters maintain a margin of uncertainty of just over a day. Most of the spacecraft will incinerate during descent, though mission officials expect heavy components like tungsten parts and mirror segments to survive the plunge into the equatorial ocean belt.
The Failed Robotic Rescue Attempt by Katalyst Space
NASA attempted to save the observatory during the summer by contracting American company Katalyst Space to execute an orbital rescue. The company built a robotic spacecraft named Link, equipped with three mechanical arms designed to latch onto Swift and boost it into a higher orbit. Link suffered critical navigation steering failures during its initial weeks in space, and operators called off the rendezvous in August.
AP reported that the rescue craft approached within 12 to 15 kilometers of Swift before the mission was officially abandoned. Link itself burned up in the atmosphere in September. Following the failed salvage operation, Swift resumed its scientific observations, but the brief maneuver window left the telescope in a rapidly decaying orbit.
Orbital Decay and the End of the 22-Year Mission
Swift dropped to an altitude of 275 kilometers by October 20, where it could no longer compensate for atmospheric drag. Control operators at Pennsylvania State University transmitted final shutdown commands to terminate the mission once altitude loss became irreversible.
John Nousek, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University who led the control team, told AP that they had known this day would come ever since before Swift was launched.
That observation came from astronomer John Nousek at Pennsylvania State University, who led the control team, speaking to AP. Swift earned a milestone in May 2005 by capturing the afterglow of a short gamma-ray burst that lasted a mere 0.03 seconds, observations that provided support for the theory that short gamma-ray bursts occur when two neutron stars collide.
