2,000 cosmic explosions later, a farewell: NASA's Swift telescope comes home after 22 years

It was built to chase the brightest explosions in the universe, and it caught more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and 1,400 exploding stars, plus comets, asteroids and black holes caught shredding stars. Now, after 22 years in orbit, NASA's Swift Observatory is making its final descent, most of its 1.5 tons expected to burn up safely in the atmosphere. A daring robot rescue attempt fell short this summer, and by late October the telescope had sunk too low to observe. Its team is 'mourning yet full of gratitude,' in the Associated Press's telling — and its archive of two decades of cosmic alerts stays open to every astronomer on Earth.