Nasa reported that the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory tumbled out of orbit as expected on Wednesday and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere over Indonesia. The satellite, which weighed roughly 3,200 pounds (1,452kg), spent two decades studying the most powerful known blasts of energy in the cosmos.
The US Space Force confirmed that the re-entry occurred at 7.39am. According to Nasa, the satellite streaked into the upper atmosphere at about 22 times the speed of sound over Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, which is roughly 200 miles (322km) north of the equator. Nasa stated it expected the frictional heat of re-entry to incinerate most of the satellite well above Earth’s surface, though some fragments might survive the plunge. The space agency reported no damage or injuries on the ground from falling debris.
The fiery demise of the telescope came less than three months after a rescue spacecraft failed its mission to boost the satellite to a higher orbit to extend its life. In July, Nasa and the Arizona-based start-up Katalyst launched a rescue vehicle called Link to rendezvous with Swift and tug it into a more sustainable orbit. However, the Link spacecraft began spinning uncontrollably soon after reaching space, and mission managers abandoned the effort by mid-August.
The US Space Force had previously calculated the risk posed to populated areas as very low, putting the odds of harm coming to anyone on Earth at one chance in 2,100. The population of the North Sumatra province totals around 16 million.
Dean Sladen, an aerospace engineer for the Britain-based industrial parts supplier Accu Components, said before the re-entry that only a “handful of small, scorched fragments are expected to make it down, nothing recognisable as a telescope.” Sladen noted in an email that satellites of this size re-enter the atmosphere regularly and that in nearly 70 years of space flight, no one has ever been killed by falling debris. He added that the risk of a re-entry accident grows over the longer term, which is why designing satellites to come down safely matters more and more.
