NASA reports that on January 18, the Neil Gerels Swift Space Observatory (Swift or Swift) suspended scientific observations and entered safe mode due to a breakdown. Agency experts suspect that the reaction wheel used for attitude control has failed. At the moment, it is disabled, the investigation of the causes of the breakdown is ongoing. According to NASA, the rest of the elements of the observatory are operational and working as expected.
In total, the Swift has six reaction wheels. They move the equipment, converting it to gamma-ray bursts, and control the orientation of the observatory. As a NASA representative told The Register, experts are now trying to launch the Swift with five remaining wheels. The observatory has been operating for 17 years, and there are no plans to return it to Earth until 2030.
Swift was launched in 2004 to detect and observe cosmic gamma-ray bursts. The observatory has three instruments - BAT (Burst Alert Telescope), XRT (X-ray Telescope) and UVOT (UltraViolet/Optical Telescope). Swift can quickly respond to the occurrence of some gamma-ray bursts, quickly turning equipment towards their source. For 17 years of work, he has already recorded several thousand such phenomena and still remains an important tool for scientists in studying the Universe.
On December 23, 2021, data transmission from another NASA satellite, Sentinel-1B, stopped. An investigation into the causes of the breakdown is still underway, but experts believe that the cause lies in a malfunction of the power system unit. Over the past month, several attempts have been made to restart the block, but they have not been successful.
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