UPDATE: NASA's Swift Space Telescope Re-Enters Atmosphere After Nearly 22 Years

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered Earth's atmosphere Wednesday at 7:39 a.m. Eastern Standard Time over Indonesia's North Sumatra region, ending nearly 22 years in orbit.

As previously reported, the space telescope was expected to fall back to Earth this week. The U.S. Space Force has now confirmed the re-entry time and location, according to NASA.

NASA said most of the spacecraft was expected to burn up as it passed through the atmosphere, although some components may have survived. The agency placed the re-entry at approximately 3.4 degrees north latitude and 98.6 degrees east longitude.

A commercial effort to raise Swift's orbit did not proceed as planned. NASA and Katalyst Space announced in August that an attitude-control problem with the LINK servicing spacecraft would prevent it from capturing and boosting the observatory.

Swift launched in 2004 for a two-year prime mission to study gamma-ray bursts, the powerful explosions that can fade quickly. Its three telescopes could observe different kinds of light, turn rapidly toward outbursts and alert other observatories for follow-up observations.

During more than two decades of operations, Swift also studied supernovae, active galaxies, stellar flares, comets and asteroids. Its re-entry ends a mission that continued far beyond its original design lifetime.