An artist’s rendering of the Swift Observatory with a gamma-ray burst going off within the background. Credit score: Spectrum and NASA E/PO, Sonoma State College, Aurore Simonnet
On the night of Tuesday, January 18, 2022, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory entered into secure mode, suspending pointed science observations. The mission staff is investigating a attainable failure of one of many spacecraft’s response wheels because the trigger.
The staff has powered off the suspected wheel. The observatory and all its devices are in any other case wholesome and working as anticipated. The observatory will stay in secure mode as a precaution whereas the staff additional investigates the difficulty.
Swift has a complete of six response wheels onboard. The staff is working to revive science operations utilizing 5 response wheels. The remaining 5 wheels are all working as anticipated. That is the primary time a response wheel has skilled a failure in Swift’s 17 years of operations.
Swift research high-energy occasions within the universe similar to gamma ray bursts, which can come from black holes being born from dying stars.
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