NASA's Swift Observatory Is Expected To Re-Enter Earth On November 4
The agency’s attempt to rescue it a few months ago had failed.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will re-enter our atmosphere around 3:30AM Eastern time tomorrow, November 4, according to the US Armed Forces' predictions. The exact time could be different, as the prediction has an "uncertainty of 11 hours." But the 3,200-pound spacecraft is heading back to Earth for sure, 22 years after it launched and after the agency's attempt to save it failed.
In early July, NASA launched the Swift Boost mission to rescue the space telescope, whose orbit was decaying too fast, in hopes that it could still gather data for the agency over the next few years. The mission was supposed to use Katalyst Space's LINK robotic spacecraft to dock with the observatory and then tug it back to a higher orbit. Unfortunately, LINK ran into attitude...
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