According to a NASA announcement, the Swift team shut down the telescope's science operations Tuesday (Oct. 20) after the observatory fell too low in its orbit to continue taking reliable measurements of the cosmos. In the coming weeks, Swift will drop even further, eventually passing a point of no return and taking a fiery plunge through Earth's atmosphere.
Swift is now beyond saving and, orbiting at just 171 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth, can no longer take reliable observations of space. NASA expects the spacecraft to break up upon reentry "in the next few weeks."
In that time, Swift made thousands of observations of exploding supernovas, intense gamma-ray bursts, and black-hole-related episodes of stellar destruction, contributing data to about 7,000 scientific papers, according to NASA.
An illustration of a stellar 'mega-flare' detected by Swift. The observatory excelled at catching powerful, fast-acting cosmic events. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)Related storiesDesigned as a multiwavelength observatory, Swift watched the sky in optical, ultraviolet and X-ray light that made it well suited to track the aftermath of powerful energy bursts. Its greatest asset, perhaps, was its rapid response time; if an explosion flashed somewhere in the sky, engineers could swivel Swift to study it within minutes, NASA said.
Swift's fast-acting observations "played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics," added Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA headquarters.
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