NASA's Swift telescope reenters Earth's atmosphere, ending 22-year mission

NASA seeks private proposals to rescue Hubble before 2032

NASA’s Swift Observatory plunged into Earth’s atmosphere near Indonesia on Wednesday, ending a 22-year investigation of the largest explosions in the universe. The U.S. Space Force confirmed the reentry after tracking the telescope’s descending orbit.

The end came less than three months after an urgent rescue mission failed. NASA had contracted Katalyst Space to try to raise the telescope into a higher orbit. The company’s robotic vehicle had problems after its July launch and crashed in September, leaving the observatory to descend on its own.

Swift launched in 2004 for what was planned as a two-year study of gamma-ray bursts and exploding stars. It observed thousands of those events over a mission that lasted 11 times longer than scheduled, and it worked as a partner for other telescopes that could explore the same targets in greater depth.

How much of the observatory burned up is not known. NASA estimates that some of the denser pieces will survive the passage through the atmosphere. The spacecraft weighed about 1½ tons.

The U.S. Space Force tracked Swift’s descending orbit before confirming the reentry, a fall that followed years of intense solar activity.

NASA is also evaluating whether to mount a rescue mission for another observatory whose orbit is being eroded by solar storms: the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. According to recent analyses, Hubble will probably crash to Earth around the middle of the 2030s.

The space agency is seeking proposals from private companies on how to raise Hubble’s orbit, modernize its systems or guide it toward a controlled reentry, or all three. Any mission of that kind would have to be carried out by 2032.

Nicky Fox, NASA’s chief of science missions, said the agency has more time to explore options for Hubble than it had for Swift, whose rescue effort was rushed.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement that the Hubble still has a lot of science to do and that the agency should examine every reasonable opportunity for it to keep delivering for as long as possible.

Swift’s loss removes one of NASA’s principal space telescopes from service for studying the largest explosions in the universe. Hubble’s orbit is being eroded by solar storms as well, and the agency is now asking private companies whether that course can be changed.