You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, shortwavers, Nate Rod here, with updates on a daring rescue mission currently underway.

One that, rest assured, if you haven't heard, has got all the workings of a good sci-fi movie.

Rockets, space robots, and a very valuable telescope.

Swift was designed to study the short-lived flashes of high-energy radiation we call

Gamory Burst.

Brad Sanko is a research astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and he's the

principal investigator in the Neil Geryl Swift Observatory, or Swift for short.

Swift is a NASA astrophysics mission. It was launched in 2004. It has been doing fantastic

science for over two decades now, but unfortunately, it's come into a spot of trouble recently.

Swift operates in low Earth orbit, meaning there's still a little bit of atmosphere for it to contend with.

Atmosphere that causes it and all satellites of that altitude to lose speed, heat up, and slowly fall back to Earth.

But what's surprised us in the last few years is that the rate at which it has fallen has

accelerated significantly.

Thanks to the sun.

You may have noticed that the sun has been much more active in the last year or two.

Causing colorful auroras that have been seen as far south as Florida.

Those are beautiful. I've seen wonderful pictures, but every time I see one of those, I cringe.

Because every time the sun does that, it causes the Earth's atmosphere to puff up,

and that leads Swift to fall at a faster rate.

Brad and other scientists used to think that Swift could keep photographing the sky,

expanding our understanding of the universe until the 2030s.

...