NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a 3,200-pound spacecraft that has orbited Earth for nearly two decades, is expected to reenter the atmosphere around 3:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday, November 4, according to the space agency's latest estimates released November 2. The reentry could occur as early as the evening of November 3, with an uncertainty window of plus or minus 11 hours. An independent analysis from the Aerospace Corporation, which tracks orbital objects, estimates reentry at 5:12 a.m. EST Wednesday, with an uncertainty of plus or minus eight hours.
Most of the Swift telescope will burn up during reentry. Any surviving fragments will likely fall between 20.6 degrees south latitude and 20.6 degrees north latitude, a band spanning Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Arabian Peninsula, India, Africa, and Oceania, though much of this range covers ocean. NASA calculates the probability of debris hitting a populated area at approximately 1 in 2,100.
The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched in November 2004 as a multiwavelength optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray telescope designed to study the most powerful explosions in space. Originally planned for a two-year mission, it operated for more than 20 years and detected thousands of deep-space explosions, including gamma-ray bursts and eruptions from black holes and neutron stars. The telescope contributed to more than 7,000 scientific papers.
Swift began rapidly losing altitude over the past year due to increased solar activity that heightened atmospheric drag. An attempted orbit-boosting mission in August using a private spacecraft failed shortly after launch. Engineers shut down the observatory's science operations on October 20 after the spacecraft fell too low to maintain steady observations. NASA will continue updating reentry predictions as the window approaches.