DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. NASA is leaving a doomed telescope to its fate. The Swift Observatory, a telescope that's orbited the Earth since 2004, is slowly falling. And this past week, a rescue mission meant to boost Swift higher into orbit failed. That means there's no hope in sight for the telescope or its rescue probe. Stephen Clark has been covering this near-Earth tragedy for Ars Technica. Welcome, Stephen.
STEPHEN CLARK: Happy to be with you.
KURTZLEBEN: OK, so tell us how much time does the Swift Observatory have left?
CLARK: Likely just a few months - the Earth's atmosphere is slowly adding resistance to the orbit of the Swift Observatory. And so in a few months' time, probably before the end of the year, the atmosphere will actually pull the spacecraft back toward a reentry, and it'll burn up. And that'll be the end of the mission after 22 years.
KURTZLEBEN: OK, so tell us a little more about the observatory itself. What does this particular telescope do?
CLARK: Yeah. So the Swift Observatory is a $500 million mission. It launched back in 2004 for what was supposed to be a two-year mission. So it has far outlived its design life, and its mission is to study gamma ray bursts. So these are the most powerful explosions in the universe. Because they're so powerful, they've gained a lot of attention from astronomers over the recent decades. Swift is uniquely designed to detect these events. It has the ability to quickly turn toward these gamma ray bursts and measure the energy coming from them. And that's why NASA was really keen on keeping Swift going for more science.
KURTZLEBEN: Now the observatory itself, why was it in such a precarious position? How did it start slipping?
CLARK: Yeah. So Swift launched without a propulsion system. It's a few hundred miles above the Earth, but even at that altitude, there is a little bit of atmospheric resistance, so that creates drag, and over time, that slows its velocity. And over many years, Earth's gravity always wins, and it pulls - it will pull the observatory back into the atmosphere, and it'll burn up.
KURTZLEBEN: I want to get into the rescue mission that was attempted here. Maybe you can tell me about it. What was the plan exactly?
CLARK: So the plan was to send a small spacecraft, about the size of a refrigerator, and it was going to approach the Swift Observatory with three robotic arms and actually grab on and re-boost Swift back to a higher altitude where it would be far enough above the atmosphere to not be under risk of a imminent reentry.
KURTZLEBEN: I see. And what went wrong then?
CLARK: So this spacecraft that launched back on July 3 - the launch was entirely successful. Once it got into space, during some of the testing, this satellite lost control. It started spinning out of control over the past couple of weeks. The ground team has tried to slow the tumble of the spacecraft, but they haven't been able to regain enough control to have the confidence needed to go actually approach Swift and grab onto it. So the rescue mission is now off unfortunately because there's no rescue for the rescuer.
KURTZLEBEN: I'm wondering if you can put this into broader perspective. What kind of research will scientists lose out on when Swift eventually burns up? And also, are there any plans to replace it?
CLARK: So there are no near-term plans to replace Swift. NASA's science budget is actually undergoing some reduction, some cuts right now. A lot of the focus at NASA is shifting toward human space flight. So there's no plan to replace Swift. There are a few other instruments that NASA has in space already that can do some of the work of Swift. But combining the wavelengths - so gamma rays, X-rays - onto one spacecraft and have that spacecraft have the ability to quickly pivot or turn, that's a capability that no other satellite in NASA's fleet has. So gamma ray science won't be dead after Swift comes back and reenters the atmosphere, but it will certainly be degraded.
KURTZLEBEN: That's Ars Technica reporter Stephen Clark. Thank you so much.
CLARK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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