End of an era as NASA telescope that detected thousands of gamma-ray bursts nears its final days
Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory conducted its final observation on Oct. 20 and is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in the next few weeks.
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THE TAKEAWAY
- The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory's final observation was on Oct. 20.
- The telescope is currently orbiting less than 171 miles above Earth’s surface.
- The telescope launched in 2004.
NASA has officially ended its effort to save the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the agency failed to adjust the telescope’s altitude above Earth.
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Swift conducted its final observation on Oct. 20 and is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in the next few weeks.
The telescope is currently orbiting less than 171 miles above Earth’s surface.
Photo of NASA's Swift satellite.
(NASA)
"Swift delivered an incredible, lasting return on investment for the nation, designed for a two-year primary mission but productive for more than 10 times as long," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said. "In that time, Swift played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics that showed how critical rapid-response observations are to the entire community."
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Over the course of its mission, Swift observed more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts, over 1,400 supernova explosions, detected stars being shredded by black holes, monitored active galaxies and conducted an all-sky X-ray survey.
The telescope also studied numerous asteroids and comets, advancing NASA’s research.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory orbits above Earth in this artist’s concept.
(NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab / NASA)
Swift’s data has contributed to approximately 7,000 published scientific papers.
"Swift leaves us with an extraordinary archive of multiwavelength observations that will fuel new discoveries for decades more," Domagal-Goldman said.
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Named after Neil Ghrels, the first principal investigator, the telescope was launched on Nov. 20, 2004.
The completed Swift spacecraft is seen in a clean room at NASA Goddard on Sept. 9, 2003.
(NASA / NASA)
Swift was designed as a multiwavelength observatory equipped with co-aligned optical/ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes.
The goal was to rapidly image gamma-ray bursts and pinpoint their locations, allowing scientists to study these brief cosmic outbursts before they faded.
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"Swift needed to detect and locate gamma-ray bursts, communicate their position to other observatories, and then swing its telescopes around to image the burst locations before their afterglows faded out," S. Bradley Cenko, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said. "This typically took Swift about a minute to do."
This picture shows a regions captured by a telescope aboard the Swift satellite of a region 200,00 light years wide.
(NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler (GSFC) and Erin Grand (UMCP))
Before Swift’s launch, astronomers had limited ability to pinpoint these bursts quickly and precisely enough to observe their fading afterglows.
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In 2005, Swift demonstrated its capabilities by detecting the afterglow of a short gamma-ray burst that lasted approximately 0.03 seconds.
The observatory turned toward the burst quickly enough to detect 11 X-ray photons, marking the first detection of an afterglow from a short gamma-ray burst.
Over time, Swift evolved into an astronomical multitool.
Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is fine-tuned to quickly locate and study gamma-ray bursts from the creation of black holes in multiple wavelengths.
(NASA / NASA)
Its systems allowed NASA to request "target-of-opportunity" observations that could be commanded from the ground in as little as a few minutes. The telescope could also schedule up to 75 independent targets a day.
Swift has since collected nearly 22 years of brightness measurements of cosmic outbursts, multiwavelength spectra and more than 1.5 million images from its ultraviolet/optical telescope.
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"The unique speed of response of the Swift hardware, the extraordinary success of the rapid mission operations and the closely knit teamwork of the Swift Flight and Science Operations teams placed Swift at the crossroads of burgeoning areas of research," said John Nousek, the mission’s operations director and a professor of astronomy and astrophysics in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State in University Park, Pennsylvania.