Space & Astronomy

By T.K. Randall
October 5, 2026

Image Credit: (PD) NASA via Wikimedia Commons

After 22 years in space, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will soon burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

Launched back on November 20th, 2004, the Swift Space Telescope, which was designed to study gamma-ray bursts, had originally been intended to operate for only two years.

Nonetheless, it ended up providing valuable data for more than two decades.

Sadly, though, its orbit has been steadily decaying during this time, meaning that it has now reached the dreaded 'point of no return' where it will descend into the planet's atmosphere and burn up.

Earlier this year, a bold rescue mission was devised that saw space firm Katalyst design a spacecraft that could intercept Swift and lift it up to a higher orbit.

While the spacecraft did launch as planned, it unfortunately ran into own problems and never made it to the rendezvous, thus dooming Swift to its unavoidable demise.

"From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission," said NASA's Shawn Domagal-Goldman.

"Without intervention, Swift was going to re-enter the atmosphere by year's end."

As the end draws near, NASA has decided to re-activate Swift's instruments so that it can capture its last few images before the end - allowing it to go out doing the thing it was designed for.

It's a sad end to a highly valuable space telescope, the achievements of which will continue to fuel our knowledge of the cosmos for many years to come.

Source: IFL Science

Tags: Telescope