NASA has taken a bold step to salvage science from an aging spacecraft: the agency revived the Swift observatory after several months in a low-drag mode. Swift had been losing altitude due to atmospheric drag, and a private mission to boost its orbit failed. Instead of letting it passively decay, NASA decided to bring it back online temporarily. By reactivating two of its three instruments — the X-ray telescope (XRT) and the ultraviolet-optical telescope (UVOT) — scientists can gather a final batch of data before the spacecraft inevitably re-enters the atmosphere and burns up. The third instrument, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), remains off for now due to its high energy requirements. While this move will accelerate Swift’s demise (it’s expected to burn up in a month or two), it allows astronomers to complete observations that would otherwise be lost.
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