NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which spent two decades studying the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday and burn up in the process, according to The Guardian.
The satellite, which was designed to operate with its three telescopes for just two years, is no longer able to steer or observe, and its re-entry is uncontrolled. The US Space Force predicts the 3,200lb spacecraft will hit the atmosphere at about 3:30am ET on 4 November.
NASA says most of the spacecraft will burn up, but some components are expected to survive. The agency said re-entry locations of any surviving components can vary and depend on when it re-enters, with surviving fragments limited between 20.6 degrees south latitude and 20.6 degrees north latitude. It put the risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth at approximately 1 in 2,100.
Launched in 2004, the observatory explored cosmic gamma-ray bursts, quickly returning observations of their location and strength to Earth. Over its operational life it detected and tracked more than 2,000 such bursts, which NASA says occur roughly once per day, come from all directions and can last from a few milliseconds to a few hundred seconds. Scientists do not know what causes them. In July, Swift observed a wandering black hole shredding a star, an event the agency described as a tidal disruption.