NASA's Swift telescope falls back to Earth after 22 years as a $30 million rescue fails

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has watched the universe's biggest explosions since 2004, was due to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up over the tropics on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, Dawn reported, citing NASA.

When, in Pakistan time

Estimates of the re-entry time differed:

• NASA: about 3:30am EST (08:30 GMT), which is 1:30pm PKT.
• The Aerospace Corporation: 5:19am EST, plus or minus two hours, around 3:19pm PKT.
• Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, citing revised US Space Force data: about 7:45am EST, around 5:45pm PKT.

NASA said any fragments that survive are unlikely to threaten populated areas. The US Space Force put the chance of anyone on Earth being harmed at one in 2,100.

Why it came down

Swift has no engine of its own. Drag from the thin upper atmosphere has been pulling it lower for months as it circled the Earth at about 27,000 km an hour. "The satellite is in a very circular orbit, skimming the top of the atmosphere," McDowell said.

In July, NASA and Arizona start-up Katalyst launched a small spacecraft called LINK to latch on to Swift and push it higher. LINK began spinning uncontrollably soon after reaching orbit, and by mid-August the mission was abandoned. The contract was worth $30 million, and Katalyst built LINK in nine months.

What Swift did

The 1,452 kg observatory cost around $500 million and carried three telescopes. It was built to catch gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions known, which flash from the cores of distant galaxies. It was designed for a two-year prime mission and worked for 22.

Over that time it also studied galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, stars throwing off X-ray flares, and comets and asteroids in our own solar system.

Why it matters beyond NASA

Swift's end is a test case for the idea of servicing satellites in orbit: refuelling, reboosting or repairing them instead of letting them fall. The LINK failure shows how hard that still is, even as NASA turns to private companies for similar jobs, including its recent call for proposals to keep the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit (our report).