NASA telescope reenters Earth’s atmosphere

(NewsNation) — The Swift Observatory, an aging NASA telescope barely clinging to space after a failed rescue effort, reentered Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday morning over the North Sumatra region of Indonesia at 7:39 a.m. EST, according to the space agency.

NASA said it expected most of the spacecraft to burn up as it traveled through the atmosphere, but some components may have survived reentry.

The Swift Observatory blasted off on Nov. 20, 2004, to search for some of the biggest explosions in the universe: gamma-ray bursts and supernovas.

Intense solar activity over the past few years dragged Swift down faster than usual. NASA hired Katalyst Space a year ago to mount a rescue. But the company’s three-armed robot named Link ran into trouble after launching in July and got no closer than 7-9 miles to the telescope. Link plunged back to Earth in September.

Swift resumed observations once the rescue attempt was called off, discovering even more gamma-ray bursts and other ultrahigh-energy events. But by late October, the telescope was too low to remain steady for observations, and its systems were shut down.

Its final tally: more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and 1,400 exploding stars, not to mention a slew of comets, asteroids and star-shredding black holes. The telescope’s superpower was its ability to swivel swiftly — thus its name — toward erupting celestial events.

NASA considered Swift a first responder for the Hubble and Webb space telescopes and others that would follow its alerts and provide deeper investigations. Scientists are still figuring out how to fill the gap.

The Associated Press and NewsNation’s Sana Azem and Steph Whiteside contributed to this report.