NASA's 22-Year-Old Space Telescope Is Falling Back to Earth, and Scientists Don't Know Where It'll Land - VICE

NASA’s Swift observatory, a once mighty space telescope, will soon be no more. While it’s not dead just yet, it is well on the way to burying itself, as attempts to revive the ailing telescope have failed. Where on Earth it will call its final resting place remains to be seen, as the legendary satellite will eventually fall back to Earth in the coming weeks.

As reported by Live Science, the 3,200-pound Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory spent the past 22 years in low Earth orbit, snooping on far-off black holes, supernovas, and gamma-ray bursts. Now, it has been decommissioned because solar activity is heating the upper atmosphere and creating drag, pulling the satellite back to Earth. NASA did launch a $30 million rescue mission, though that failed in July, sealing Swift’s fate.

NASA officially shut off the satellite’s instruments on October 20 after it dropped to an altitude of 171 miles above the Earth. The U.S. Space Force expects the space junk to reenter the atmosphere this week.

The satellite will burn up as it reenters the atmosphere; scientists warned that about 10 percent of its weight could survive reentry and ferociously slam back to Earth. Exactly where it will land isn’t known yet, but an extremely rough, extremely large swath of the planet makes up its potential landing zone, encompassing South America, Central America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, and India. Researchers say that getting bonked by a falling NASA satellite has odds anywhere between 1 and 2,100 to 1 in 10,000, which is relatively low but still not low enough.

No need to shed a tear for Swift, as it far outlived its originally planned two-year mission. It had a great life, with its observations filling the pages of countless published studies and acting as something of an assistant to its more impressive siblings, the Hubble and Webb telescopes.