NASA's Swift space telescope has plunged back to Earth, burning up as it reentered the atmosphere over Indonesia. The observatory spent 22 years studying some of the most violent events in the universe, and its loss closes a long chapter in high-energy astronomy.
Swift was launched in 2004 on what was planned as a two-year mission. It went on to observe thousands of cosmic explosions, including gamma-ray bursts and dying stars, and it often served as the first responder, quickly turning its instruments toward new events so that other telescopes could follow up on them.
Its orbit had been decaying for some time. Intense solar activity heated the upper atmosphere and dragged the spacecraft lower, and a long-shot rescue effort by the private company Katalyst Space could not save it. Katalyst launched a robotic craft in July, but the mission crashed in September and never reached Swift. The U.S. Space Force tracked the orbit's decline and confirmed the reentry.
The spacecraft weighed about 1.5 tons. It is not yet known how much of its debris survived the fiery descent and reached the ground. The loss also puts attention on the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, whose orbit is eroding from the same solar storms. Recent analyses expect Hubble to reenter by the mid-2030s, and NASA is asking industry for ideas on boosting or guiding it. Any rescue mission would have to launch by 2032.