NASA’s Swift Observatory is set to fall back to Earth on Wednesday after efforts to boost it into a higher orbit did not succeed, the agency said. NASA expects the spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere at roughly 3:30AM ET, with a margin of about 11 hours. Most of the telescope should burn up on the way down, though some pieces are likely to survive re-entry.
The observatory weighs about 3,200 pounds. It stands 5.6 meters (18.4 feet) tall and spans 5.4 meters (17.7 feet) wide, a figure that includes its deployable solar arrays. NASA put the odds of anyone on Earth being harmed by surviving debris at about 1 in 2,100.
Because Swift’s orbit has a low inclination, any surviving fragments that reach the ground are confined to the band between 20.6 degrees south latitude and 20.6 degrees north latitude, according to NASA. The agency said the exact locations depend on the timing of re-entry and can fall in either hemisphere. NASA and the Space Force will keep tracking the descent and update their predictions.
The re-entry follows the end of a rescue attempt earlier this year. A spacecraft that was trying to push Swift higher ran into technical problems with attitude control, and NASA abandoned the effort. The telescope was launched almost 22 years ago and was originally given a two-year prime mission to study the origin of gamma-ray bursts. It went on to operate as a general-purpose multiwavelength observatory until solar storms dragged it into a lower orbit.
NASA is directing the public to its blog for continuing updates on the descent. The agency has not identified any specific region as being at elevated risk.
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