NASA's "1.5-ton" space telescope to fall back to Earth soon... How likely is damage?

Risk of an incident is about one in 2,100
Most debris expected to fall into the ocean

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is expected to see the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (NGSO, or Swift), a space telescope it failed to rescue, fall back to Earth soon.

According to U.S. broadcaster CBS on November 2 local time, Swift, which weighs about 1.5 tons, is expected to reenter the atmosphere on November 4.

Most of Swift's body is expected to burn up in the atmosphere. However, some components made of tungsten, which is denser than lead, and fragments of its mirrors could pass through the atmosphere and fall to the ground.

Most of the debris is expected to fall into the ocean, but parts of Africa, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America are also among the areas where it could come down. NASA estimated the risk of someone on Earth being harmed as low, putting the odds of an incident at about one in 2,100.

U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). AP-Yonhap News

Swift is a space telescope deployed to observe ultra-high-energy phenomena. Launched in 2004, it has observed more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and around 1,400 stellar explosions to date. After operating for more than 20 years, its orbit gradually lowered, increasing the risk of its falling back to Earth and prompting a rescue mission.

NASA signed a contract with startup Catalyst Space Technologies and sent the rescue spacecraft Link into space. The plan was for Link to approach Swift, capture it, and raise it to a stable orbit. However, Link, launched this summer, became uncontrollable and failed to reach Swift, bringing the rescue mission to an unsuccessful end.

John Nousek, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University who led Swift's mission operations team, said, "From the time Swift was launched, we knew this day [when it would fall back to Earth] would come. Anything that goes into low Earth orbit must eventually come down, and the end is destructive."

He said, "I hope the lessons learned from Swift's achievements will be applied to next-generation space missions and accelerate discoveries about the universe." Scientists are looking for ways to fill the gap left by the end of Swift's observations.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.