Follow Us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Editor’s note: As of 11:15 a.m. EST on Wednesday (Nov. 4), NASA and Aerospace Corporation predict that the Swift observatory may have already re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. However, no new details regarding the re-entry have been provided. Stay tuned for more updates on where and when the telescope will fall. NASA’s decades-old Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is rapidly falling out of orbit and could return to Earth at any time, the space agency says. According to NASA’s latest estimates, shared on Monday (Nov. 2), the roughly 3,200-pound (1,450-kilogram) spacecraft will likely re-enter Earth’s atmosphere around 3:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday (Nov. 4). with an uncertainty of plus or minus 11 hours, meaning the defunct observatory could have sunk on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon. An independent analysis by the private, nonprofit Aerospace Corporation, which tracks thousands of objects in orbit, similarly estimates that the telescope should have reentered the atmosphere at 6:56 a.m. EST on Wednesday, give or take three hours. Both estimates suggest that the Swift spacecraft could have already disappeared as of Wednesday morning, although no official confirmation has been shared. Latest Live Science Videos As with all spacecraft re-entries, the risk to humans is minimal. According to NASA, most of the Swift telescope is expected to burn up in the atmosphere. Any surviving fragments will likely fall somewhere between 20.6 degrees south latitude and 20.6 degrees north latitude, a range that includes parts of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Arabian Peninsula, India, Africa and Oceania, but also much of the ocean. NASA predicts that the chances of debris from Swift falling on a populated area are about 1 in 2,100. For comparison, the odds of a person being struck by lightning in their lifetime are 1 in 15,300, according to the National Weather Service. You might like NASA will continue to update its predictions as the reentry window approaches. What is the Swift spacecraft? Swift has detected thousands of explosions in deep space, including sudden flares from neutron stars (illustrated here). (Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is a multi-wavelength optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray telescope that launched in November 2004 on a mission to study the most powerful explosions in space. Initially designed for a two-year primary mission, the telescope ultimately spent more than 10 times that duration searching for supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and black hole-induced flares around the universe. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. Swift has been rapidly losing altitude for more than a year, after rampant solar activity increased drag on the aging spacecraft. Last August, an expensive mission to boost Swift’s orbit with a private spacecraft failed shortly after launch, putting the final nail in Swift’s coffin. Engineers on the Swift team officially shut down the observatory’s scientific operations on October 20, after the spacecraft fell too low in orbit to continue taking constant observations of the sky. When Swift exits with a fiery explosion, she leaves behind a treasure trove of scientific data, including contributions to more than 7,000 scientific papers. until now, according to NASA. This number will only increase as Swift’s final observations are processed.
