World Space Week and farewell to Swift

Sarah Al-Ahmed: The largest space event on earth and saying goodbye to the Swift Space Telescope, this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. 

Every October, people in over a hundred countries come together to celebrate space during UN declared World Space Week. Dennis Stone, President and Co-Founder of the World Space Week Association, joins us to talk about how a volunteer effort that started in Houston 45 years ago grew into a global celebration and how you can get involved this October. Then, Planetary Society Science Editor, asa Stahl is here to walk us through the final chapter of the Swift Space Telescope. 

After 21 years of groundbreaking discoveries, Swift is sadly falling out of orbit. And the ambitious rescue mission that was meant to save it didn't go as planned. Later, our Chief Scientist Bruce Betts marks the 100th anniversary of the rocket that started it all in this week's, What's Up. 

If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. 

World Space Week is coming up October 4th through the 10th, and this year's theme is Rocket Revolution. I sat down with Dennis Stone, President and Co-Founder of the World Space Week Association. Dennis spent 38 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center. He helped lead the commercial orbit transportation services or COTS program. That's the investment that funded early SpaceX and orbital science cargo missions to the International Space Station. He also served as the project executive in NASA's commercial low earth orbit development program and spent time as VP of business development at Vast, the commercial space station company. 

He's been building World Space Week as a volunteer alongside all of that. We talk about how it all started, where it's going next, and why space is still one of the best tools we have for inspiring the next generation. Hi, Dennis. Thanks for joining us.

Dennis Stone: Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I always look forward to World Space Week, but for people who may have heard of this and never participated, what is World Space Week?

Dennis Stone: So World Space Week is the biggest space event on earth. It was declared by the United Nations in 1999. There was something that we were organizing called Space Week before that, but it became an official UN celebration then. And World Space Week has been growing rapidly and is now in over a hundred countries each October 4th through 10th.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: The dates of World Space Week were chosen very intentionally, October 4th through October 10th. Why those dates specifically?

Dennis Stone: Yeah, so the UN Outer Space Committee, I've attended many of their meetings, a very diplomatic body with ambassadors and they're all very careful. And so at UNISPACE III, which was a major meeting of the space world in Vienna in 1999, they had massive debates and negotiations in smoke-filled rooms and all the things you could ever imagine. So what they agreed, it turned out October 4th was the date the first satellite ever left earth, Sputnik. And October 10th, a date I kind of half jokingly state, "Only a space lawyer truly appreciates," is when the first ever outer space treaty went into force, I think about 10 years later. So it made a nice sandwich of a week. And so this was something they all agreed to, October 4th through 10th. 

We were actually celebrating the Apollo 11 anniversary, and then we moved it into the school year because we were missing the kids. But then quickly when the Space Week organization that I also was part of heard about the UN declaring World Space Week, we said, "Hey, let's just go offer to help and move everything to their dates." And they said, "Sure, you can be our NGO partner." And the rest is history. So for 27 years now, we've been supporting the United Nations Office by our space affairs and the global coordination and trying to get more people involved and supporting them and reporting on what happens.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, there's a long history to this and you've been here for the whole thing. You co-founded what eventually became this World Space Week Association in 1981, I want to say 45 years ago?

Dennis Stone: Yeah, I was involved. So I was just a young little whippersnapper here in Houston. I was at an AIAA meeting, and he 10th anniversary of Apollo 11 had already happened. That was '79. And in '80, there are people saying, "Hey, let's organize this." Because people were celebrating it randomly around the country. And they said in '80, "Why don't we give it a common name and logo and try to make it more meaningful so it gets national media attention?" And so I got involved as a volunteer in '81. And in '82, we actually formed an organization, a nonprofit, to do that task. And so I co-founded that and became president and I haven't stopped ever since. It got renamed a few times, the logo changed. As I mentioned, the dates changed, but it's still the same idea of getting the world to celebrate space in a narrow time window, which tends to punch through the noise and reach more kids and reach more adults kind of like Earth Day.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What did it feel like seeing this World Space Week that was being sporadically celebrated in different places become something that was recognized by the United Nations?

Dennis Stone: Yeah, that was not really even in our plans. We were just trying to get space people everywhere and teachers everywhere to celebrate space during initially Space Week, moved into the school year at NASA's recommendation, and it kind of lost a little momentum, frankly, because we didn't have the Apollo 11 moon landing anniversary, but it was something a little more global in the school year. 

And then the UN's declaration caught me by surprise, a pleasant surprise. My phone was starting to ring from people in Vienna, "Dennis, what's going on here?" And so it was exciting getting on a plane, flying to Vienna, meeting with the director of the UN Outer Space Office, Sergio Camacho at the time, and very welcoming and said, "Yeah, let's work on this together." And it was great to have their support. 

And we really, at that point, taking something that was mostly in the United States, we had 10 other countries involved back in '99 and just leveraging the UN's connections with so many spacefaring nations to expand this thing. And we were so excited, "Oh wow, we got 200 events this year. Oh, it went up to 300?" And to hit 50,000 a quarter-century later is just amazing. And now I'm saying, "Let's go for a million." I mean, we really want the world to celebrate space.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: When you say 50,000 events, what does an event look like in this context?

Dennis Stone: The vast majority are in schools where teachers are using space in one form or another to inspire students about STEM and other topics. We were helping one organization translate some materials that used space to inspire reading and history and other things. So it's just a magnet for kids. I always say there are two things that excite young kids. There's space and dinosaurs. So it's a tool really. It comes down to a tool for a teacher, a savvy teacher to say, "Hey, we're going to celebrate World Space Week this week," and everybody's excited. And yet they're still learning physics and chemistry and other things. 

We learned from the model of Earth Day back... It started in the '70s. My kids used to come home from school with stuff that week, teaching geography and environmentalism and science and all kinds of stuff. That really inspired us because it was how schools took this kind of special day and turned it into a learning tool. So our goal has always been for World Space Week to be that same tool for teachers. 

So anyway, back to your question, a vast majority are in schools, but we also have afterschool events. Some events are put on by space agencies, at planetariums, science museums, telescope star parties. This year we're focusing a lot on Marvel Rocket launches. We've seen symphonies play space music and libraries promote space books. As it takes hold, it's really starting to spread out across society.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Did you get interested in space when you were a kid or was it something that arose later in life?

Dennis Stone: Oh, no. My mom showed me the stars when I was 4 and I was hooked on Star Trek and the Apollo program was in full blast. So no, I was hooked. There was never any hope for me in any other field.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How did you balance all of the things that you had to do as president for World Space Week Association with this huge career at NASA? You worked on the COTS program, which in part is the reason why SpaceX is such a successful company.

Dennis Stone: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, long hours, blood, sweat, and tears, trying to raise money so we can hire people. We have a staff of two. World Space Week Association, if you took the ratio of its size of the organization to the size of the program that it stimulated, you're not going to find any organization in the world with that kind of efficiency, that kind of leverage impact per dollar. We have a lot of volunteers, of course, as well, planning, delegating, those kinds of things. But yeah, I always wore two separate hats, my space career and my nonprofit role.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, this is actually quite a big year for you. You've been the president of this organization for quite a long time, but you're about to become President Emeritus and you're handing off the reins to your colleague, Maruska Strah.

Dennis Stone: Right.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What is this moment like for you and why is now the moment that you're passing off this torch?

Dennis Stone: Well, it's been too long really. Nobody wants to run an organization for as long as I have. I've enjoyed every second of it. It's been incredible and so rewarding to see the growth and the impact that World Space Week has had. But I'm not getting any younger. And so Maruska is fantastic. She was our longest serving executive director, and so she knows the organization in and out. And we have the greatest confidence in her, and I'm thrilled to be passing the torch finally and will stay on to help her as best I can.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Has she expressed to you any big vision for where she hopes that this event goes?

Dennis Stone: Well, I think we all share the vision of just continuing not just numerically in growing World Space Week, but also qualitatively increasing its impact, evening it out geographically. Because there's some countries that do a huge amount of events and others not as much. And so, we all share the vision to expand it, particularly in some nations that we think could do a little better job.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: You spoke about this just a little moment ago, that this year's theme for World Space Week is Rocket Revolution. What does that topic encompass?

Dennis Stone: Well, you mentioned the COTS program, and I was so honored. In fact, I got an email two days ago from my old boss. It was 20 years ago that NASA signed the first SpaceX agreement with SpaceX for Falcon 9, Dragon development. They developed the Falcon 9 and started launching not only what NASA needed, but serving other customers to such an extent that the price of launch has fallen over those 20 years. The frequency of launch has accelerated dramatically. Of course, the market... As prices come down, demand comes up, and so other companies have entered the launch business. We're thrilled to see. 

And it really is a revolution, not just with SpaceX, but all the companies from the small launchers, there must be 20 or 30 or 40 of them. The big ones, ULA, with Vulcan, Blue Origin with New Glenn. It's not about the rocket, it's about what this revolution has enabled in terms of applications of space. 

The cost to launch a satellite, first of all, the satellites have miniaturized for other reasons, but the cost to launch them has dropped so much. So many satellites are up in space now. More businesses are popping up all over, coming up with new applications, new ideas for earth observation and things of that sort that can benefit humankind. So we're celebrating not just the rockets, but the revolution that they've created in space applications for the benefit of all.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And I've seen that in the guests we brought on the show in the last few years even, this increased access to space through commercial industries and things like CubeSats have now allowed people, even young students at universities, to actually think about launching their own space missions, and they're very excited about it. But how do you translate this really complex idea of the fact that launches used to be something that government agencies did, to this moment now where it's very accessible? And how do you make that story something that resonates with a young person who may not understand the difference between commercial space and federal space agencies?

Dennis Stone: First of all, we just want to use rockets to excite them, to excite them about their future, to excite them about science and technology and math, and we are encouraging them all to launch model rockets and understand how they work. The broader story is really for the public and sharing this impact that the rocket revolution has had on society and will have as prices continue to come down and new applications continue to happen. 

We create a theme and create a poster, an image to communicate that, but we don't claim to be the one authoritative source on the message. It's really, it's an open forum, and so the theme is a guideline and people can say whatever they want. And so, we leave it to organizations like Planetary Society and many others who are deeply embedded in space policy and all these things to go out and use World Space Week as a platform, a forum to speak your messages to your audiences. We don't write a long script, to answer your question. We just give the basic idea and let people shape that into whatever messages they want to send out that week.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I have to ask, was the timing intentional? Because 2026 is the 100th anniversary of Robert Goddard's first liquid fueled rocket launch. It was back in 1926.

Dennis Stone: Yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Did Rocket Revolution arise as a theme for this year because of this centennial moment or was it just the moment that we're living in?

Dennis Stone: It was actually a beautiful coincidence that we were thinking of Rocket Revolution or just the concept of rocketry and how it's changed space access for a while now and kind of targeting this year, because we tend to plan these a couple years in advance. And frankly, I wish we could claim credit for that, but it turned out it was also the 100th anniversary of the Goddard launch and that just made great synergy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Perfect timing.

Dennis Stone: Yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, there are so many different organizations that are involved in this, and they all have their own events. I'm sure you might even break the record from last year. But what are some of the events that are going to be happening for World Space Week 2026 that you're most excited about?

Dennis Stone: Well, as you know, European Space Agency is going to work with Pokemon and we don't know the details yet.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's so cool.

Dennis Stone: But it's just so exciting to... I mentioned earlier how World Space Week is getting institutionalized and spreading out across society. And it's great to see a space agency work with somebody who has no relationship with space, but has a great relationship with kids. So we're very excited about that. 

World Space Week Association, as mentioned, is this small nonprofit that is just the cheerleader and encourages everyone to celebrate World Space Week. We give them the website to track what goes on and help tell the media and all those things, produce the posters and whatnot. So sometimes we don't even know. People say, "What's going on during World Space Week?" I say, "Well, ask me as we get closer and see what people have submitted to the calendar." There's some great things going on in Seattle, a group there that's planning a concert and a conference. Airbus is a European-based company. They let their employees go out and talk to schools during World Space Week, half day off or something. Employees love it, the schools love it, the kids love it, and the company loves it, because they all kind of community affairs recognition. And so every year, some of the same things go on every year, but every year there's something new and exciting. Last year, King Charles had a World Space Week event.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Wow.

Dennis Stone: Yeah, that was our reaction, too. Will he do that again this year? Probably not, but... So ask me again as we get closer.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What kind of resources are you providing to people that are going to allow them to not only throw their own events, but theme them around this idea of rocketry?

Dennis Stone: I used to launch Model Rockets when I was a kid, just something we space nerds do. And so, we're encouraging kids everywhere through their schools with parents or rocket clubs to launch model rockets. So we have a guide that talks about the different kinds. You can buy kits from STs, you could build water rockets, Alka-Seltzer rockets, all kinds of different little things. Maybe they only go up 10 or 20 feet, but still you learn about pressure and nozzles and force and equal and opposite force, Newton's laws. 

So we do have a resource guide about that, and we're also just trying to get folks to hear the call through all of our networks, and encourage Planetary Society members as well to launch rockets or encourage their students' teachers to do a rocket launch that week, and put it on the calendar so that everybody knows what's going on. World Space Week is at www.WorldSpaceWeek.org.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's fun. We've collaborated with organizations like Estes Rockets in the past, and I remember every single rocket launch I did as a little kid, everything from the model rockets to the little Alka-Seltzer rockets. I loved doing that.

Dennis Stone: Yeah. Actually, Arm & Hammer, I don't know if they're doing it this year, but last year they helped, I think like 200 US schools launch baking soda rockets.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Wow.

Dennis Stone: So we're hoping that they'll expand that footprint this year as well.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, one of the things that stands out about how World Space Week approaches education is that you've built it so that anyone can participate no matter what their resources are. How do you think about designing a program that can be used at a well-funded school in Houston versus a classroom in rural Kenya?

Dennis Stone: Oh yeah, it's all about making it simple, easy to access. Again, Alka-Seltzer is sold everywhere, baking soda, sold everywhere. So our idea has always been to put the resources in the hands of people where they are. You don't have to come to Houston and celebrate World Space Week. You just do it in Nairobi or wherever you happen to be. 

Because first of all, the ideas sometimes and things a teacher can talk about are freely available. There's lots of great downloadable materials from NASA and ESA and others, and we have guides to all of those. But also building a rocket is not that hard. We do have a Google guide this year on that topic. But the thesis is that space can be used by any teacher anywhere they are, frankly around the year, but we at least do it during World Space Week, and we try to encourage them to make the most of whatever resources they have.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Over the years of being a part of this program, have you ever encountered someone who got into space because of an event that they did during World Space Week as a kid?

Dennis Stone: Again, we don't normally put on events ourselves, but we organized a zero-G airplane flight for, again, they're teenagers because they have to be a certain age to fly legally. We picked a girl from Nigeria who was very interested in space, and she was so poor. She had never even seen an airplane before. And we flew her to Florida and put her on a zero-G plane, and that was kind of a test. The next year, we had kids from all over the world fly, all holding hands, floating in zero-G. Of course, we tried to follow up with as many as we can, but there are millions of kids that have experienced World Space Week, and I wish we could track them all. 

We've also seen... We've heard a lot of other impacts. Peter Martinez, the executive director of the Secure World Foundation, talks about how in South Africa there was no space agency, and there was some World Space Week events. And folks from different agencies actually got together and had some initial discussions thanks to the World Space Week umbrella there. He's written papers on this, how SANSA, the South African Space Agency, was formed as a direct result of World Space Week. So we have anecdotes like that to talk about other measures of impact.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It makes me so happy to know that so many nations around the world are forming new space agencies. So right now is the perfect time to try to be expanding the footprint of this event. But how do you expand something that's already reaching 102 countries?

Dennis Stone: We do some top-down and we do some bottoms up. Top down would be going to the UN Space Committee where all the spacefaring nations send delegations and the [inaudible 00:24:02] and encourage them, and through IAF and other means. And bottoms up was just going out through social media. This interview today, I hope I inspire your listeners to do something during World Space Week. Promote The Planetary Society, help the society find new members, set up a table somewhere, just do something, talk about it in social media. Everybody should do something. So we do a lot of that bottoms up promotion as well.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Over all the years that you've been doing this, are there any events that really, really stuck out to you or moments that you got to participate in that were just super fun?

Dennis Stone: Oh my gosh, more than I... Well, my standard answers, "What are you doing during World Space Week?" My answer is, "Nothing." That's the one week we take off during the year. We work the other 51 in preparing and reporting and following up. There have been some really great events, Apollo astronauts driving a moon buggy in Rio de Janeiro sponsored by Omega Watch, all kinds of interesting things. I've seen a lot of really, really cool events. Someday we'll publish a book and talk about them all. There's so many.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That would be a really cool book. Just imagine how many lives have been touched by this. I've heard this from people who have listened to Planetary Radio over the last 23 some odd years, you never know what kind of impact just getting out there and sharing your passion for something does. So trying to actually figure out how many people's lives have been changed or whose imaginations have been sparked by an event like this is just unfathomable. You probably can't track the numbers, but I'm sure it's huge.

Dennis Stone: Yeah, it's huge. And as you can see, the space industry is growing and more people are working in it because they read an ad in the paper. These people probably studied the engineering and other skills they need to get good quality jobs because they were inspired. And all over the world, you're seeing hundreds of new companies forming, thousands of people working on, again, launch vehicles, satellites is huge, analysis of products from space. It's just a revolution in the entrepreneurship that the rocket revolution has stimulated, I think, says a lot to your question of the labor market, some of whom... You're saying we should do a survey, but how many of these kids were touched by space events, whether they be World Space Week or programs of NASA and others when they were young? I don't think there's been any really good research on that, but it's just intuitive that many have been touched.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Absolutely. I remember the astronomers that took me out to see the stars as a little kid. I remember every rocket, the teachers that brought things to show and tell. All those moments along the way changed my life, and that's just one person in the vast sea of humans out there. For someone who's hearing this right now and thinking to themselves, "I want to be a part of this," what's the most direct way for them to get involved in World Space Week in 2026?

Dennis Stone: Many different ways. The simplest way, sitting in your easy chair is, share your opinions on space to say, "Hey, it's World Space Week." Do a hashtag, WSW2026, and just share your views on space, encourage somebody to have an event, like a teacher at your school. A third tier is go organize an event yourself. An event would be have people over and watch space movies, get the library to feature space books, go set up a table to promote The Planetary Society. 

For those who are really interested, of course, we're always looking for help at national levels. We have national coordinators, local coordinators, and we're at the global level. So reach out to us at WorldSpaceWeek.org if folks really want to play a role at the global level because they have more time.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, that would be wonderful, right? If you want to expand the reach of this kind of event, especially if you want to get into other countries who are just beginning to have their own space agencies and stuff like that, all it takes is one volunteer who is really passionate about it. And thankfully, this is one of those things where you just give the resources and everybody coordinates together. So it's a really big impact for what could be just a bit of someone's time.

Dennis Stone: Yeah. I've volunteered all these years, but I get paid in other ways, not only the satisfaction I mentioned of seeing the smiling kids, but the international relationships I've built, working with countries all over the world has been invaluable to me. And it's something that we offer to folks who are willing to help at the global level.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, I want to thank you personally for everything you've done to spark this event. I've had so much fun during World Space Weeks in the past. Of course, I would because I'm a space person, so I get to see these moments with all my friends and family and people that I've worked with. But I'm sure it is just impossible to calculate how many people have been impacted by this. And I think you and everyone who started this and committed their time to it should be really proud to see what it's become.

Dennis Stone: Oh, indeed. We are very, very proud. But I keep saying, "Hey, we're nowhere near a million events yet, so we've got some work to do."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: You heard him. We got to get out there and do it, you guys.

Dennis Stone: Come on. Everybody do something during World Space Week and help us achieve that goal. By concentrating an event like an Earth Day, like a Space Week, into a narrow window of time, the total amount of effort is so much greater than if it was spread throughout the year that it punches through the noise in the media, social media, reaches more people, engages more people and has more effect on people. So I keep preaching synergy through synchronization. That's the secret sauce, the not so secret sauce of World Space Week.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And who knows what this will become as we expand our presence in space and it becomes more accessible to everyone. Who knows what the next 45 years brings for the global effort to get into space or for World Space Week? You might hit that one million mark way sooner than you think.

Dennis Stone: I hope so.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, congratulations on all of this and for now soon becoming President Emeritus of the organization. I hope you get to chill out and really sit down and reflect on just how awesome it's been that you got to create this and be proud of what you guys have done.

Dennis Stone: I will try to find some time. Thank you though. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you and your listeners and give them a little more information about World Space Week.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, I'm going to leave resources to all the things for World Space Week on this week's episode of Planetary Radio. That'll be at Planetary.org/radio. So you can get involved. And if you want to tell us what you've done for World Space Week so we can report it back to the people who have been organizing this, you can write us an email as well, because I would love to share your stories. We're all in this space together, right? Thanks so much, Dennis. We'll be right back after this short break.

Kirby Runyon: Hi, I'm Kirby Runyon, planetary geologist at the Planetary Science Institute and founder of Planetary Experience Consulting. Think of your favorite photograph from the moon or Mars. Have you ever wanted to read the stories recorded in those rocks? You can learn how. This October, I'm co-leading a three-day expedition to some of New Mexico's finest planetary geology analog sites. And I'd love for you to join me. From October 15th through 19th, we'll explore tube-fed lava flows at Carrizozo, soak in the volcanic desolation of Kilbourne Hole volcanic crater and stand at sunset over the sublime White Sand National Park. 

These are some of the same landscapes where Apollo and Artemis astronauts have trained. We'll also visit Spaceport America, the New Mexico Museum of Space History, and the Las Cruces Challenger Learning Center. Space is limited to just 20 people. And for every person who registers, The Planetary Society will receive a donation. Head to Planetary.org/travel to learn more and save your spot. I hope to see you there.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Dennis mentioned that the rocket revolution theme is about more than just the rockets. It's about everything that those rockets have made possible, from humans living and working in space to the extraordinary observatories we have peering deep into the universe. But nothing in orbit lasts forever. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory launched in 2004 on a two-year mission to study gamma ray bursts and ended up operating for over 21 years. But now it's falling out of the sky, and the bold rescue mission that was sent up to try to save it just didn't work out. I talked with our science editor, Asa Stahl, about Swift's legacy, what went wrong with the rescue, and what it all means for the future of our aging space telescopes. Hey, Asa.

Asa Stahl: Hey, great to be here.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Good to have you on. Although a bit of a somber story here, I was really hoping this was going to turn out.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, I would say bittersweet because Swift had or has had a really, really good run. It is just a little bit of maybe an oppi type moment where it's like goodnight, sweet Prince.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's so true. I mean, the expected operation time for this observatory I think was about two years, and it ended up lasting way, way longer than that. So in the end, I can't be too upset about it, but we never want to see our spacecraft meet their end. And I know, Bruce keeps telling me I anthropomorphize these spacecraft and I need to stop doing it.

Asa Stahl: Well, I don't know. I think that this one was pretty cute. It still is for now.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, for people who haven't really been following along with this, this isn't necessarily a Planetary story. We're talking about an observatory that sees in a realm of light that isn't necessarily useful for our kind of science, but is still absolutely amazing. So what is the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory?

Asa Stahl: It is a very agile first responder of a gamma ray observatory. So before we had this observatory, we had some sense of what gamma ray bursts were. We knew that they're the most powerful explosions we were seeing in the observable cosmos, but we only had ideas about what could be causing them. And Swift managed to shed a great deal of light on that, no pun intended, in part by doing something that no other observatory was doing. We have, for example, NASA's Fermi Observatory, which is the sort of all sky surveyor that gradually was building up and has been building up our catalog of these gamma ray burst explosions, extremely traumatic explosions. But Swift is this multi-wavelength observatory, so x-ray, UV, optical gamma ray that will look at about half the sky or so at once. And then as soon as it sees something, within a minute, it is pointing right at it. 

And so, it is seeing the physical processes behind these explosions evolve in real time, which is super scientifically useful to understand what's causing them. And the answer is stuff like the collapse of stars into black holes causing supernovas and then the breakout of radiation. And then there's also compact object mergers, so like neutron stars merging, black holes merging, and sometimes what we call tidal disruption events when a star is falling into a black hole, is getting ripped apart. So kind of the coolest stuff in space that isn't typically on The Planetary Society's menu of exploring worlds, finding life, all the other stuff that makes you get impressed with what goes on out there and that you really hope that we someday get to look out from a safe distance, that's what Swift was doing.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's some of the coolest science. And it reminds me a bit of this connection to LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. We don't think about this as being Planetary-connected, but that experiment has revealed these mergers of either black holes or neutron stars, these compact objects. And it turns out that has a lot to do with the elements that make up life and things in our bodies. So in some way, this kind of science really does actually help us understand where all this came from.

Asa Stahl: Yes, it's all connected. And another way to look at it, talking about the birth of life is also potentially sterilization and destruction of life that scientists have given a great deal of thought to these gamma ray bursts potentially being a limiting factor for how much life can arise and spread throughout the universe. Because if one of these hit the earth, everything would be over. We'd be done, so it'd be game over.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It'd be really bad. Another thing though that I didn't really understand until I was learning more about the Swift Observatory recently is I thought it was either an acronym or Neil Gehrels Swift, maybe that was his last name, but all of that turned out to be wrong. So what is the origin of the name of this telescope?

Asa Stahl: Yeah, I also did not realize this. I thought that it was named, Neil Gehrels Swift. After the principal investigator, the former principal investigator of the mission, Neil Gehrels Swift, but that is only a half-truth. It was named Swift not as an acronym, but after the bird, swift, because it can just kind of quickly flitter across the sky in its observations, it's agile. That's what's at the heart of this mission. But at the same time, when its former principal investigator, Neil Gehrels passed away, they renamed the telescope. So now it has this very cool compound name that gets at both the human and the operation side of what this observatory does.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, with that capability, we've talked a little bit about what it was able to look at and what it taught us about gamma ray bursts, but what are some of the other scientific discoveries that this thing helped us unlock?

Asa Stahl: Oh man, there's so much stuff. It did so many cool things. It set a lot of records. It discovered the most distant gamma ray bursts ever. It found the first ever supernova we'd ever seen as it was exploding just by sheer luck.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So cool.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, and you can watch that video by the way.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What do you mean, luck?

Asa Stahl: I believe it was looking at that same patch of sky just by chance looking at a different gamma ray burst that saw this one. And you can watch this video, you can look up supernova as it's happening, and you will see the video of it appearing. And it just looks like there wasn't a star and now there is a star. But it's pretty impressive when you know what's going on. And it's also seen stars getting eaten by black holes. It's discovered new categories of gamma ray bursts. It has seen the radiation associated with gravitational wave events like compact object mergers. In general, this is an imperfect metric, but there have been over 6,000 scientific papers published using Swift data. So that's a lot of science.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That is a lot of science. I'm glad we got so many years with this thing. It ended up surviving almost 22 years. I think we're a couple months off from that 21 years now, which just speaks to the amazing engineering. The fact that this thing lasted so much longer than intended is amazing. But now we're dealing with the circumstance where unfortunately this thing is kind of falling out of orbit. What's causing that to happen?

Asa Stahl: It's atmospheric drag, just friction. As long as you're orbiting the earth, if you're not super, super far up, there's still some tenuous atmosphere, and you're just running up against stuff, like moving through molasses, but extremely, extremely thin. And so, eventually things decay and they fall back to earth. This happened with the widefield infrared surveyor, so WISE, or I think it got renamed to NEOWISE, I think I got the acronym right, a couple years ago. That was, I think, a pretty similar type of thing where it was designed to last a few years, ended up lasting for about 20. It did incredible work that was very aligned with The Planetary Society in that case of trying to detect near earth objects. And then its orbit just decayed and it burned up in the atmosphere.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. I think we're seeing something, too, that happened with our LightSail mission, which is that solar maximum is actually impacting how fast this thing is coming down, which is really fascinating.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, it's too bad. It survived one solar maximum 11 years ago. Unfortunately, it's not surviving this one. But yeah, it does happen. It puffs up our atmosphere a bit. And I think that also gets worse, particularly during solar storms. But just in general, yeah, the background activity levels are higher now. And yeah, that spells danger to something like Swift. 

So the idea with this rescue mission was to prevent that, and it had to happen before October or so was the idea that that's when the atmospheric drag, it would be too low down in the atmosphere, it'd be unsavable. We're both talking about this the way we are because that mission didn't work out.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. We knew that there was going to be an end to this telescope. And I think it's really ambitious, but also really clever that they try to come up with a way to fix this situation, even if it didn't work out. What was their actual plan for trying to correct this thing so it didn't fall out of orbit?

Asa Stahl: It was a pretty quick contract. Like what I was just saying, they only have so much time before this thing deorbited. And so, whatever that was going to come up, they had to do it. Yeah, was there [inaudible 00:42:21]

Sarah Al-Ahmed: A Swift contract, if you will.

Asa Stahl: Oh, no. Yes, it was a very swift Swift contract for about $30 million to this private company called Katalyst Space. And they built this spacecraft called LINK Plus that... And Katalyst in general, I believe their business model is around satellite servicing essentially. If you send your satellite up there and then you're like, "Oh shoot, we forgot something, or we messed up, or we wish we could send something else up there that could just make this one thing change about it," then they'll do that. 

So changing how we think about launches as kind of final and like, "Ah, it's up there. There's nothing else we can do except send commands to it and hope that they fix the situation." Unfortunately, that is the position that Katalyst Space itself found itself in when it sent up the LINK spacecraft to rendezvous with Swift. And then it has these three arms. Arms is kind of a generous word. They're weird. It's almost like the underside of a folding table, these accordiony, pincery things that are supposed to grip onto Swift. And that would've been the real challenge because Swift wasn't designed to be grabbed onto, so they would've had to come up close to it, look at it really carefully, think about, "Okay, I think that these are the three contact points we want to make," and then just give it a hug of life, of accelerate, hop away from Earth and reboost it so that it gets a greater lifetime. The spacecraft, the LINK plus spacecraft ran into issues with its thrusters and its maneuverability to the point where NASA just had to deem it unsafe to actually attempt that maneuver.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's a bummer. But at the same time, my understanding is that even though they're not actually going to try to fully grapple the spacecraft, they're still going to try to do some kind of rendezvous just as a test round essentially.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, because there's a lot that you can still learn from doing this sort of thing because you can imagine, just like with NEWWISE two years ago, this is going to keep happening. NASA's going to keep building amazing observatories that exist functionally way beyond their intended or expected minimum lifetime, and it's going to keep being worthwhile to pay a small cost of launching a new mission to just go back up and try to reboost them or fix some odd little thing about it. You can imagine with Hubble, what if we hadn't been able to service it? What if when it went up that first time and there was that issue with the optics, we've just been like, "Ah, well, that's a billion dollars. Oh, well."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right.

Asa Stahl: It's nice to be able to have this option. And so developing this capability is definitely valuable.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. We have had so many amazing telescopes over the years that we can no longer use. Anything that you use to see this higher end of the spectrum is always a ridiculous feat of engineering. But point being, we need telescopes that can do this kind of science. We invest a bunch of money into it. If we can find ways to save them, even after these long amounts of time that they're already exceeding their lifetimes, I feel like that will really increase the worth of building these giant flagship missions. And we need to have a full spread of these observatories if we're going to keep doing this kind of science.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, I think it's just good economics. These things are an investment, they're a taxpayer investment. And for the same reason that it would be silly to shut them down prematurely due to NASA budget cuts, it would be silly to let them end early if we could with just a little bit more resources, make them continue to, for pretty little money, do amazing science that no other mission is planned to really quite replace right now.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But now that the rescue mission has sadly not worked, what happens to the spacecraft now?

Asa Stahl: Well, it'll continue to drift lower and lower in its orbit, and sometime around October it'll burn up in the atmosphere. And I don't think there's any risk it's going to cause any debris and stay in orbit or any debris that'll pose a danger to anyone actually on earth. And it probably won't even be a news item. I don't think it was for NEOWISE either when it burned up. It was like we found out weeks afterward. Someone was like, "Oh yeah, it's gone now." It's a sad little end.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Is Swift actually still operating or has it already stopped doing its thing?

Asa Stahl: Yeah, they stopped having it do its thing a while back, I believe several months ago, in preparation for this mission and also because they want to, I think, conserve the resources it has, assuming it would hopefully have another shot.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. This isn't the only telescope that we have that's losing altitude at this point. The big example I'm thinking of is the Hubble Space Telescope. I would be absolutely devastated to my core to see Hubble come down. And so, is there anything that we can learn from the situation that might help us in the future with saving Hubble?

Asa Stahl: Yeah, I certainly hope so, because that would be utterly tragic. And you know that Isaacman himself, back before he was administrator, was trying to lobby for a mission to reboost Hubble and offered to foot the bill, which was very magnanimous. But at the time, NASA did not accept. And I think there's a pretty weighty decision to be made there, right? I would not be the one who has to decide, is this telescope about at the point in its life where it's worth taking the risk of sending a mission up there that is... 

Every time you're launching any mission and starting a spacecraft up for the first time, you're rolling the dice that it's going to work the way that you intend it to, that it will be able to get the job done. We know Hubble works now. Maybe we could get another six months, year, two years out of it if we leave it alone, or maybe we get another 10 years out of it if we reboost it, or maybe we send a spacecraft to reboost it, and it bonks into it and it's an orbital debris nightmare and you destroy a piece of humanity's cultural heritage and an immensely productive scientific instrument that could have made who knows what discoveries.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That would be awful if we accidentally crashed into Hubble. Can you imagine? But almost worth the risk, honestly. But it brings up a good point, which is this mission, even if things hadn't gone weird with it, would've still been really risky because the spacecraft themselves aren't designed with this kind of reboosting in mind. And that says to me that potentially we should consider building our spacecraft or having a plan for how to reboost them if this is a viable technique. Maybe we can standardize this for the future.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, that's a great point. I bet you people are looking into that. And yeah, I think like everything else in space mission planning, it's a game of trade-offs. And for the same reason that there's debate each time over whether a spacecraft or science mission should be serviceable or not, regardless of whether it should be reboostable, should be serviceable. And so I know, for example, that with the Habitable Worlds Observatory, and that mission's just in concept phase, one of the things that they're discussing is, "Should this be serviceable like Hubble was?" And I think the sources I've heard are saying, "Yes, it should be because it's going to be such a big investment to get it up there. It'll be so unique, there'll be nothing else like it up there that it's worth putting more of the investment in upfront to make it stay up there for longer." But for a different mission, the risk calculus might be different. Either way though, like you said, the best way we can improve our odds whenever we roll those dice is to keep doing things like this when the math does math and learn from it. And so hopefully, this is not the last time we see a servicing mission like this.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, what happens now in the realm of studying gamma ray bursts? Is there any other telescope that we can rely on to help us do this science now that Swift is coming down?

Asa Stahl: Well, like I said before, there are other gamma ray observatories. They're not like the sort of quick swivel, first responder type of thing. Fermi does gamma ray bursts, Chandra does x-rays that are also associated with these events, and those are both also priceless observatories. There's also a mission, SVOM, that is a collaboration between China and France, I believe, and it does something that is quite similar to what Swift does. But my understanding is that it's a little bit less prolific. So for example, Swift discovered, I mean it discovered thousands of gamma ray bursts, but something like 1800 by its 20th anniversary.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Wow.

Asa Stahl: Yeah. This Chinese, French mission, I think its goal is to detect about 200 over the course of a three-year mission lifetime. It's already been up there for about two years. So compared to what Swift has done, it will not have the same impact just in terms of the numbers of gamma ray bursts it's detecting. But if it lasts for 20 years instead of three, then we would be in a great position again.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, thankfully we don't expect a gamma ray burst to go off anywhere near us, and we do understand a lot more about these events now that we've had Swift, right? So it's not like the mystery still remains, but studying them continues to be important. And so, I hope that we do continue to invest in this kind of science because, come on, who doesn't want to know more about some of the most violent extreme events in the entire universe?

Asa Stahl: Yeah, and the most complicated. And they're at the forefront of this whole other burgeoning field in astronomy of multi-messenger astronomy, of being able to detect things in gravitational waves as well as light at the same time. And having a window into the gamma universe, it's like if you couldn't see the color red, how well would you be able to describe the world around you and explain it? You just need to have the full spectrum.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, I feel bad for everyone on the mission who I'm sure was really hoping that this was going to turn out. And also for Katalyst who spent all this time to try to save the mission. But in the end, I would hesitate to call this a failure. I feel like the fact that we attempted it is brave. It's really ambitious. And the spacecraft, we were just going to extend its life anyway its already extended life. So as much as I'm sad about the whole thing, I think we're going to learn a lot that's very valuable for the future. So I'll try to look on the bright side about this, even if I am absolutely once more anthropomorphizing a spacecraft.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, no, I think it would've been icing on the cake. It would've been like a cherry on top. And maybe this particular frosting or whatever didn't sculpt out the way we wanted it to, but we learned about how to make the next one do that. So yeah, it already had a fantastic mission, and I think it's definitely something to celebrate.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Absolutely. Well, thanks for joining me, Asa, and telling us about this story. And I hope that when it does come down, maybe, maybe someone gets to see it shooting through the sky, maybe.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, make a wish upon it. I wish for another Swift.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much, Asa.

Asa Stahl: Thanks.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We want to wish everyone on the Swift team the very best as they bring this amazing mission to a close. 21 years of discovery is something that they should all be immensely proud of. Now our Chief Scientist, Dr. Bruce Betts, is here for What's Up? And this week, going along with that rocket revolution theme, we're going to look back at that first rocket that started it all. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Man, I had so much fun looking forward to World Space Week. I hope that some of the people who listen to this episode actually get a chance to organize some kind of event and become a part of this.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, it's World Space Week. I mean, space, world, fun.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's our jam. It was funny though, as I was having this conversation, we were talking about the theme of this year's World Space Week and the fact that it's themed around rockets. And I asked if that was some kind of centennial celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first liquid fueled rocket that Goddard flew, and it turned out that was totally by coincidence. They didn't do that on purpose.

Bruce Betts: That's funny. Yeah, Goddard, liquid fueled rockets, crazy people out on Aunt Effie's farm launching dangerous rockets. You got to love it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Okay. So who is Aunt Effie? I only learned more about Goddard this year because of the 100th anniversary, so there's so much of this story that I didn't know before.

Bruce Betts: All right. He was named after NASA Center and we all need to learn more about Aunt Effie. All I know is it was Aunt Effie's farm in Auburn, Massachusetts where they've launched the first liquid rocket as well as presumably many of the 30 or so more they did over the next 15 years or so. So 1926, March 16th, Aunt Effie's farm, liquid oxygen and gasoline, maniacal and wonderful, launches this liquid fueled rocket, lasts only two and a half seconds, reaches 41 feet, 41 feet in altitude, landed 184 feet away in a cabbage patch.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I wonder how the cabbages fared, [inaudible 00:56:14] my cabbages.

Bruce Betts: I hope they're Aunt Effie's cabbages and not like the neighbor or something. So this was one of those small steps, but so significant because yeah, sure, this didn't do that much. Doing the liquid fueled rocket for the first time, developing all of the parts of which he had patents from many years before on some of the rocket propulsion stuff, figuring all that out really was what started moving towards the big, big rockets that we use today to go places out there in space.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Can you imagine? You're just launching something on Aunt Effie's farm and inadvertently create the age of rocketry? Well, I guess not inadvertently, he was angling for it, but he never got to live to see all of this. I keep talking about this, but man, if I had a time machine, we're picking up Goddard, we're picking up Nancy Grace Roman, we're picking up Vera Rubin, and we're taking them to see the results of what they did because they deserve it.

Bruce Betts: This is awesome. I see Bill and Ted 4.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, that would be sweet.

Bruce Betts: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, picking up the science people, showing them what it led to. Most excellent.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I say it's funny, although it's not actually funny when I really think about it, but the fact that he was kind of ridiculed for even suggesting that you could launch rockets to space and do it with liquid fuel.

Bruce Betts: Yeah. As you let me know once upon a time, it was the very funny New York Times, six years before the launch, had an editorial saying, "Goddard lacked the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools, claiming rockets couldn't work in the vacuum of space." Oops. So then what's really funny, credit to the New York Times was in 1969, the day after Apollo 11 launched, the Times printed a correction noting, rockets can indeed function in a vacuum, concluding simply, "The Times regrets the error from 1920."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: This is one more reason why things like World Space Week and reaching out to young people and getting them excited about science is so important, because if someone had sat down with the person writing that article for the New York Times and explained Newton's laws, maybe they wouldn't have printed that.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, they probably would have. They were misapplying Newton's laws. Yeah. Yeah. And you got to build the right kind of rocket to work in space to their credit. Because indeed there's no oxygen there, but you bring your oxidizer in some form, whether liquid oxygen or mixed into your solid propellant, or just take the breath out of people's lungs that are inside the spacecraft. No, no, that's a terrible idea.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Terrible idea.

Bruce Betts: I was just kidding. You look terrified.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Very limited fuel source.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, it's not the best. One of his competitors tried that and RIP.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Did you launch any model rockets or anything when you were younger?

Bruce Betts: Oh yeah, totally. I definitely launched them and launched them and launched them.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. I remember my cousin, Mark, came over once with a bunch of model rockets and we tried to launch them in the backyard. And I think my mom said something about, "Maybe don't light the whole hillside on fire."

Bruce Betts: Yeah, people get really tense for some odd reason when you do, even back in the old days, because they're really impressive and weird. But yeah, you don't want to launch them in that dry area. But we'd find green fields, and you have to use the small engines if you're on... So yeah, the real challenge was always launching the ones that went higher and getting them to land back near where you were.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, yeah.

Bruce Betts: So yeah, we had so many stories, I won't tell them now, but so many stories of them landing not quite where they should have, one of them involving a bull.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I definitely hopped some fences to go retrieve one of the rockets. Ended up in some kind of secret garden once. I wish I was lying. It was weird.

Bruce Betts: Was there a bull there, because-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: No, not that time.

Bruce Betts: Whoa. There's so many stories I want to hear from you sometime, I think. I'm kind of scared. Maybe we should move on. Should we? 

All right. We're going to do another statistic comparing things. First of all, ask it as a question. What is the average density? What's the densest planet in our solar system? This is one that gets people a lot because they think, "Hey, Mercury's got... A lot of mercury's on big iron core." But, we win, Earth-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Really?

Bruce Betts: ... has the highest average density at 5.515 grams per cubic centimeter, whereas Mercury is 5.427 grams per cubic centimeter. But where you do hear that mercury's denser is just if you say, "Well, if Earth didn't squish everything because of its extra gravity, then Mercury would win." So if you just took all the components and laid them out on the universe's largest table, then... Okay, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But Mercury would be denser. But in fact, when you get a bunch of stuff and a bunch of gravity, it starts to squish stuff. And so, Earth's inner parts and stuff gets squished, and you end up with a somewhat slightly higher average density in reality as opposed to theoretical, what if we didn't squish it?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, go Earth, we win.

Bruce Betts: Yes. Yes. There you have it. There's a random space fact.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's awesome.

Bruce Betts: All right everybody, go out there, look in the night sky and think about the strangest experience you had having rockets come down where you didn't expect them to. Thank you, and goodnight.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get a Planetary Radio t-shirt at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. 

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Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreier is the host of our Monthly Space Policy Edition and Mat Kaplan hosts our Monthly Book Club Edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio. And until next week, ad astra.