A doomed spacecraft set to plunge to Earth in weeks has shared new cosmic images.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to detect and monitor gamma-ray bursts, but after 21 years of science operations, its low-Earth orbit began to rapidly decay because of increased solar activity.<\/p>\n
An image shows NGC 1097, a spiral galaxy about 48 million light-years from Earth, on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/ ESA et al. \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to detect and monitor gamma-ray bursts, but after 21 years of science operations, its low-Earth orbit began to rapidly decay because of increased solar activity. NASA \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
A daring mission to catch and lift NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher orbit failed over the summer.<\/p>\n
Currently located around 200 miles above Earth, NASA says Swift is expected to re-enter Earth\u2019s atmosphere later this year, potentially around November.<\/p>\n
The 1,470kg, 5.6m-high observatory will most likely break up and largely burn up, but NASA has not publicly confirmed whether debris will reach Earth.<\/p>\n
An image of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is shown in this photo released on Friday, October 9, 2026. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/ ESA et al. \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
An image shows spiral galaxy NGC 4151, which has an actively growing supermassive black hole at its center, in a photo released Friday, October 9, 2026. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/ ESA et al. \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
Katalyst Space\u2019s LINK robotic servicing spacecraft awaits encapsulation inside a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket prior to a failed mission to save Swift at NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, in this photo released Friday, October 9, 2026. NASA\/Ron Beard \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
NASA said on Thursday (9\/10) that the new image collection is just a sample of the many cosmic objects that Swift and its Chandra X-ray Observatory have observed together in the pursuit of learning more about the mysteries of space.<\/p>\n
They include the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), one of the Milky Way\u2019s closest galactic neighbours at a distance of about 200,000 light-years from Earth, as well as NGC 1097, a spiral galaxy about 48 million light-years from Earth that contains a supermassive black hole about 140 million times more massive than our Sun.<\/p>\n
The rescue mission, using Katalyst Space\u2019s LINK spacecraft, ultimately failed to raise Swift\u2019s orbit after an ongoing attitude-control issue left the vehicle unable to capture the observatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A doomed spacecraft set to plunge to Earth in weeks has shared new cosmic images. NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[19409,718,6625,79,193],"class_list":["post-876826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-milky-way","tag-nasa","tag-planets","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}