NASA confirms Swift observatory has re-entered Earth's atmosphere

LOS ANGELES -- NASA confirmed Wednesday that its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered Earth's atmosphere nearly 22 years after its launch.

The US Space Force confirmed that the Swift observatory re-entered Earth's atmosphere at 7:39 am Eastern Time (1239 GMT) Wednesday over the North Sumatra region of Indonesia, at about 3.4 degrees north latitude and 98.6 degrees east longitude.

NASA had expected most of the spacecraft to burn up during re-entry, although some components may have survived.

Launched in 2004, Swift was designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the universe's most powerful explosions. Originally planned for a two-year prime mission, the observatory operated for more than two decades, studying a wide range of cosmic phenomena. It observed different wavelengths of light, rapidly pointed toward short-lived cosmic outbursts and sent alerts to other observatories to coordinate follow-up observations, NASA said.

NASA had sought to extend Swift's operational life through a commercial spacecraft servicing mission. Katalyst Space Technologies' robotic spacecraft LINK was launched in July to approach, capture and boost Swift to a higher orbit.

However, LINK encountered attitude-control problems during commissioning, preventing it from safely carrying out the planned operations. The mission was scaled back to technology demonstrations, and LINK re-entered Earth's atmosphere on Sept 25.

NASA announced on Oct 23 that Swift had ended its science mission as its orbit continued to decay.