{"id":132120,"date":"2026-11-05T13:42:48","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=132120"},"modified":"2026-11-05T13:50:50","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:20:50","slug":"neil-gehrels-swift-observatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/neil-gehrels-swift-observatory\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Re-Enters Atmosphere Over Indonesia After 22 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory<\/b> <b>Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, NASA reported that the Neil Gehrels Swift satellite Observatory tumbled out of orbit and burned up in Earth\u2019s atmosphere over Indonesia.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was launched by the <strong>National<\/strong><\/span><b> Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2004.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was aimed to explore the universe\u2019s most <\/span><b>powerful explosions, called gamma-ray bursts.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is part of <\/span><b>NASA&#8217;s medium explorer (MIDEX) program<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and was launched into a low-Earth orbit on a Delta 7320 rocket.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Objectives:<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Determine the<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> origin of gamma-ray bursts and how the burst evolves and interacts with the surroundings.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Classify gamma-ray<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> bursts and search for new types.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use gamma-ray bursts to study the early universe.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perform the first sensitive hard <\/span><b>X-ray survey of the sky.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was comprised of <\/span><b>three instruments namely<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b>Burst Alert Telescope (BAT):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It had large field-of-view and high sensitivity, the BAT detected about <\/span><b>100 GRBs per year<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and computes burst positions onboard the satellite with arc-minute positional accuracy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b>X-ray Telescope (XRT):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It was able to obtain <\/span><b>spectra of GRB afterglows<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> during pointed follow-up observations. The images are used for higher accuracy position localizations, while light curves are used to study flaring and the long-term decay of the X-ray aferglow.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><b>UV\/Optical Telescope (UVOT): <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The UVOT takes images and can obtain spectra (via a grism filter) of GRB afterglows during pointed follow-up observations.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Achievements:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Since its launch, Swift has also studied hundreds of supernova explosions, star-shredding black holes, stellar <\/span><b>X-ray flares, asteroids and comets<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, contributing to some 7,000 published scientific papers.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source:<\/b> <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ddnews.gov.in\/en\/nasas-22-year-old-swift-satellite-telescope-falls-from-orbit-in-fiery-finale\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">DD News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA&#8217;s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered Earth&#8217;s atmosphere over Indonesia on November 4, 2026. Launched in 2004, it studied gamma-ray bursts and other cosmic events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":132158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11378],"class_list":["post-132120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-neil-gehrels-swift-observatory","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132185,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132120\/revisions\/132185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}