NASA Ends Swift Mission After 22 Years as Satellite Drops to 171 Miles
Updated
Updated · Scripps News · Oct 31
NASA Ends Swift Mission After 22 Years as Satellite Drops to 171 Miles
3 articles · Updated · Scripps News · Oct 31
Summary
NASA said the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has ended science operations and is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere within weeks, though it gave no exact date.
At about 171 miles above Earth this week, Swift had fallen too low for stable observations as atmospheric drag increased, forcing NASA to shut the mission down.
Most of the spacecraft is expected to burn up during re-entry, with any surviving debris likely to be minimal.
Over more than two decades, Swift helped reshape high-energy astronomy—studying thousands of gamma-ray bursts, more than 1,400 supernovas, and producing 1.5 million images, 12 terabytes of data and about 7,000 scientific papers.