NASA'S SWIFT TELESCOPE RE-ENTERS EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE NEAR INDONESIA

NASA's Swift Observatory re-entered Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday, ending a 22-year mission studying the universe's most powerful explosions. The US Space Force confirmed the telescope came down near Indonesia, its orbit having been lowered by intense solar activity in recent years. The re-entry came less than three months after a recovery attempt failed, when a robotic vehicle built by Katalyst Space ran into problems after launching in July and crashed in September. NASA said it was unclear how much of the 1.5-tonne craft disintegrated, though several denser components were expected to survive.

Swift launched in 2004 for what was meant to be a two-year mission studying exploding stars and gamma-ray bursts, but operated eleven times longer than planned. It catalogued more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and 1,400 exploding stars, along with comets, asteroids and star-shredding black holes. The telescope took its name from its ability to swivel rapidly towards erupting celestial events, alerting other instruments to probe them further. John Nousek, the Pennsylvania State University astronomer who led its control team, said: "We've known this day would come since before Swift was launched. At least in low-Earth orbit, what goes up must come down. And that end is catastrophic."

NASA is now assessing commercial interest in a recovery mission for the Hubble Space Telescope, which has also been affected by solar weather. Hubble was deployed in 1990 and faces re-entry by the mid-2030s. The agency is seeking proposals on raising Hubble's orbit, modernising its hardware, carrying out a controlled deorbit, or some combination of these. No timeline has been confirmed for choosing a partner to carry out the work.