NASA space telescope plunges to Earth after two decades studying cosmic explosions

This photo provided by NASA shows an overhead crane raising the Swift spacecraft, wrapped in a protective cover, to vertical before being placed on a work standInside at Hangar AE at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida on Sept. 9, 2002. (NASA via AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — One of NASA’s premier space telescopes plunged to Earth on Wednesday, ending its 22-year investigation of the universe’s biggest explosions.

The Swift Observatory’s demise came less than three months after a long-shot rescue mission failed.

The U.S. Space Force confirmed Swift’s reentry near Indonesia after tracking its sinking orbit, the result of intense solar activity the past few years.

NASA hired a private company to whip together an orbit-boosting effort, but Katalyst Space’s three-armed robotic craft ran into trouble following its July launch and came crashing down in September.

It was not immediately known how much of the 1.5-ton spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere. NASA anticipated some of the denser pieces surviving.

Swift rocketed into orbit in 2004 on what was expected to be a two-year study of gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. It observed thousands of them over a mission that lasted 11 times longer than planned, serving as a first responder for other telescopes that could probe deeper.

NASA is gauging industry’s interest in mounting a rescue mission for another observatory whose orbit is being chipped away by solar storms: the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched in 1990, Hubble is expected to come crashing down by the mid-2030s, according to recent analyses.

The space agency is looking for input from private companies on whether and how they might boost Hubble’s orbit, upgrade its systems or guide it to a controlled reentry — or all three. Any such mission would need to happen by 2032.

Unlike the rush job with Swift, the space agency has more time to explore options for saving Hubble, said Nicky Fox, NASA’s science mission chief.

“Hubble still has important science ahead of it,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement, “and we should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible.”

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Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press