{
  "id": 17945065,
  "title": "Heres how to track the Swift telescopes final hours before it crashes",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/03/heres-how-to-track-the-swift-telescopes-final-hours-before-it-crashes",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-03T10:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mashable",
    "slug": "mashable",
    "url": "https://mashable.com/science/how-to-track-nasa-swift-space-telescope"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "NASA anticipates that its Swift space telescope will re-enter Earth's atmosphere early Wednesday morning, concluding a two-decade-long monitoring of sudden, powerful cosmic events. The U.S. Space Force predicts the re-entry to occur around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time on November 4. According to NASA, most of the spacecraft will burn up during its descent, although some fragments may reach the ground. While the agency doesn't provide a live orbital tracker for Swift, you can monitor its final days through NASA's blog, third-party websites, and apps.\n\nSwift, officially known as the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, was designed to study gamma-ray bursts, black holes, and stars that flare in X-rays. Launched in 2004, the telescope could swiftly respond to cosmic events. However, a $30 million rescue mission to boost Swift into a higher orbit failed due to control issues with the servicing spacecraft. Despite the mission's failure, Swift continued observing, detecting targets such as stellar explosions, black holes, and comets in our solar system.\n\nSwift's orbit is decaying due to increased drag from Earth's upper atmosphere, exacerbated by recent solar activity. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 171 miles on October 20, beyond which it could no longer counteract the drag. On that day, Swift entered a protective mode, and its operations team initiated a command to end the mission. NASA estimates that surviving fragments could fall anywhere between 20.6 degrees south and north latitude, covering a band around the equator. The agency estimates the chance of someone being harmed by debris to be about 1 in 2,100, making the risk of injury extremely unlikely.",
  "summary": "NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere Nov. 4. Learn how to track its fiery plunge.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}