Announcement

NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Observatory Approaches End of 21-Plus-Year Mission as Orbit Decays

NASA marks Swift's 21-plus years in orbit with four Chandra/Swift composite images, including a view of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

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A four-panel image with composite images of galaxies. At upper left is a spiral galaxy with gleaming blue and purple arms wind around its center. In the upper right, another spiral galaxy has a glowing pale-yellow core, surrounded by a muddle of clouds in shades of purple. In the lower left, an irregular galaxy resembles a splatter painting in orange, purple, blue, and white. Another spiral galaxy is in the lower right. It has a bright, golden orange and purple core with spiraling blue arms wrapped tightly around the center and spreading as they extend outward. The image is watermarked “Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO and ESA/XMM-Newton; UV: NASA/Penn State Univ/Swift and NASA/CAS/CNES/John Hopkins Univ. Applied Physics Laboratory; Optical: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/MCELS Team/Middlebury College/F. Winkler, Mark Hanson (used with permission), and Armen Akopian (used with permission); Infrared: ESA/NASA/JPL-CalTech/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare.”

TLDR

NASA says Swift is approaching the end of its mission after 21-plus years in orbit. Launched in 2004, the observatory is descending due to atmospheric drag. NASA is celebrating Swift's work alongside Chandra with four new composite images, including views of the Small Magellanic Cloud, NGC 1097, NGC 4151 and NGC 1365.

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1 Source, first seen 20d ago