.png?w=1024)
Explore:
Exoplanets
Worlds beyond our solar system.
Stars
Giant balls of hot gas that burn for millions to billions of years.
Black Holes
Concentrations of matter with gravity so powerful not even light can escape.
Galaxies
Collections of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust bound together by gravity.
Swift Boost June 2026
All spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience drag caused by our planet's atmosphere, and after 21 years, the altitude of NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has entered a phase of rapid decay due to a bout of increased solar activity.
NASA has contracted Katalyst Space to prepare a robotic servicing mission, launching a spacecraft called LINK that will boost Swift to a higher orbit. The project will demonstrate a key capability for the future of space exploration while also extending Swift’s scientific life.
The boost mission is expected to launch in June 2026.
Swift Spies on a Snacking Black Hole
When a star strays too close to a monster black hole, gravitational forces can break it apart in a violent event called a tidal disruption. But sometimes the star survives only to come back for more.
In 2022, scientists using NASA’s Swift spotted a Sun-like star slowly being stripped by a black hole. Every few weeks the star swung close enough to lose material and produce a flare of X-ray light that Swift could see, giving us a rare, repeated glimpse of a black hole that would otherwise be completely invisible.
Swift: The Telescope That Refuses to Quit
When NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched in 2004, it was built for a two-year mission to chase gamma-ray bursts. Twenty-one years later, it has observed not only gamma-ray bursts, but also comets, the first light ever seen from a gravitational wave source, and many other phenomena. When a gyroscope failed in 2024, the team was ready with a backup plan they'd kept in their pocket for 15 years.
Learn More
NASA’s Swift Celebrates 21 Years of Multiwavelength Science
Originally designed as a satellite dedicated to studying GRBs — gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the cosmos — Swift also monitors active galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, studies stars undergoing X-ray flares, nova outbursts, and supernova explosions, observes comets and asteroids in our own solar system, and conducts long-term observations of a variety of objects. Swift now occupies a place at the crossroads of multiwavelength, time domain, and multimessenger astronomy.
Read about Swift's milestones about NASA’s Swift Celebrates 21 Years of Multiwavelength Science
