Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - World Space Week and farewell to Swift

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Dennis Stone, president and co-founder of the World Space Week Association, takes us behind the scenes of the largest annual space event on Earth. From its origins as a volunteer effort in Houston to a UN-declared celebration reaching 50,000 events in over 100 countries, Dennis shares how World Space Week inspires the next generation, and how you can get involved this Oct. 4 through 10. Then, Science Editor Asa Stahl breaks down the end of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the 21-year-old space telescope that's falling out of orbit after a bold rescue mission fell short. Plus, Chief Scientist Bruce Betts looks back at a milestone centennial in this week's What's Up, 100 years since Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-world-space-week-and-swiftSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The largest space event on Earth and saying goodbye to the Swift Space Telescope. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah al-Ahmad of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Every October, people in over 100 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 Aces 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's 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 the, 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. Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me. 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? So World Space Week is the biggest space event on Earth. It was declared by the United Nations in 19, 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 100 countries each October 4th through 10th. The dates of World Space Week were chosen very intentionally, October 4th through October 10th. Why those dates specifically? 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 3, which was a major meeting of the space world in Vienna in 1999, they had massive debates and negotiations and, you know, smoke-filled rooms and all the things you could ever imagine.

So what they agreed turned to October 4th was the date for satellite, left Earth, you know, 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 like about 10 years later, but 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 we, 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,

you know, 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 of Outer Space Affairs and the global coordination and trying to get more people involved and and supporting them and reporting on what happens. 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. Yeah, I was involved. So I was just a young little whippersnapper here in Houston.

I was at an AIA-Meting, and, you know, the 10th anniversary of Apollo 11, it already happened. That was 79. and in 80, you know, there are people saying, hey, let's, you know, organize this because people were celebrating it randomly around the country and they said, and 80, why don't we give it a common name and logo and try to, you know, make it more meaningful so it gets national media attention. And so I got involved. I was a volunteer in 81. And in 82, we actually formed an organization, a nonprofit, to do that task.

And so I, you know, I co-founded that and became president. And I haven't stopped ever since. As 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. 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?

Yeah, I mean, 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 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. It wasn't surprised.

My phone was starting to ring from people in Vienna. It does? You know, what's going on here? And so it was exciting, you know, getting on a plane flying to Vienna, meeting with the director of the U.N. outer space office, Sergio Camacho at the top. 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 like 10 other countries involved back in 99 and just, you know, leveraging the UN's connections with so many space-faring nations to expand this thing. You know, and we were so excited, oh, wow, we got 200 events this year. I mean, oh, what up to 300? You know, and to hit 50,000, 20, quarter century later, it's just amazing. And now I'm saying, let's go for a million. I mean, we really want the world to celebrate space. When you say 50,000 events, what does an event look like in this context?

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, translates to materials that used space to inspire reading, you know, and history and other things. So it's just a magnet for kids. You know, I always say there are two things that excite young kids. There's space and dinosaurs, you know.

So it's a tool, really, that comes down to it to it for a teacher, a savvy teacher, to say, hey, we're going to say, hey, we're going to celebrate World Space Week this week and everybody's excited, oh, you know, 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. You know, my kids used to come home from school with stuff that week, you know, 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 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 after-school events. Some events are put on by space agencies at planetarium, 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. I mean, it's really, as it takes hold, it's really starting to spread out across society. Did you get interested in space when you were a kid, or was it something that arose later in life?

Oh, no. My mom showed me the stars when I was four, and, you know, I was hooked on Star Trek, and, you know, the Apollo program was in full blast. So, no, there was no, never any hope for me in any other field. 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? Like you worked on the COTS program, which in part is the reason why SpaceX is such a successful company. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, long hours, you know, blood, sweat and tears, you're trying to raise money so we can hire people. I mean, we have a staff of two. you know, we're a tiny,

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. You know, we have a lot of volunteers, of course, as well, you know, planning, delegating, those kinds of things.

But yeah, I always wore two separate hats, you know, my space career and my nonprofit, bro. 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 Marushka Straw. What is this moment like for you? And why is now the moment that you're passing off this torch? Well, it's been too long, really. I mean, nobody wants to run an organization for as long as I have. I mean, 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 Marushka 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 we'll stay on to help her best I can. Has she expressed to you any big vision for where she hopes that this event goes?

Well, I think we all share the vision of just, you know, continuing not just numerically and growing, you know, World Space Week, but also qualitatively increasing its impact, evening it out geographically. Because there are 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. You spoke about this just a little moment ago that this year's theme for World Space Week is Rocket Revolution. What is that topic encompass? Well, you mentioned the COTS program, and I was so honored. I got an email two days ago from my old boss. It was 20 years ago that NASA,

signed the first Space Act Agreement with SpaceX. Wow. Or 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. They're the big ones, ULA with Vulcan, you know, Blue Origin with New Klan. It's just, it's not about the rocket.

It's about what this revolution has enabled in terms of, of, of, you know, applications of space. I mean, the cost to launch a satellite, first of all, the satellites have miniaturized, you know, 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, you know, the revolution that they've created

in space applications for the benefit of all. 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?

First of all, we just want to use rockets to excite them, you know, to excite them about their future, to excite them about, you know, science and technology and math. and we're 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 and image to kind of communicate that, but we don't claim to be the one authoritative. source on the message, right? It's really, it's an open forum. And so we, the theme is a guideline and people can say whatever they want. And so we, 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. You know, we don't write a long script to answer your question, where you just kind of give the basic idea and let people, you know, shape that into whatever messages they want to send it out that week. 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. 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? You know, it was actually a beautiful coincidence that we were thinking of rocket revolution or just, you know, 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 we 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. Perfect timing. Yeah. Well, you know, 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? Well, as you know, European Space Agency is going to work with Pokemon, and we don't know the details yet. But it's just so exciting to, you know, I mentioned earlier how, you know, 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. Sometimes we, you know, World Space Week Association, as mentioned, is this small nonprofit. It is just the cheerleader and encourages everyone to celebrate World Space Week. We try, you know, 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, you know, 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. So every year, you know, it's just, it's some of the same things going on every year, but every year there's something new and exciting. Last year, King Charles had a World Space Week event. Wow. You know, yeah, that was our reaction too. I mean, you know, will he do that again this year?

Probably not. But, so ask me again as we had closer. 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? I used to launch model of rockets when I was a kid, right? This is something we space nerds do. Yeah. And so we're encouraging kids everywhere, you know, through their schools, parents or rocket clubs to launch model of rockets. So we have a guide that talks about the different kinds of.

You can buy kits from STs. You can build water rockets, Alka-Salsa rockets, all kinds of different little things. You know, maybe they only go up 10 or 20 feet, but still, you learn about, you know, 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, you know, to hear the call through all of our networks. and encourage Planetary Society members as well to launch rockets or, you know, 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. It's fun. We've collaborated with organizations like SD's rockets in the past. And I remember every single rocket launch I did as a little kid, right? Everything from the model rockets to, you know, the little alpha. Alka-Seltzer rockets. I loved doing that. Yeah. Yeah, actually, Arm and Hammer, I don't know if they're doing it this year, but last year, they helped, I think, like 200 U.S. schools launched baking soda rockets.

Wow. So we're hoping that they'll expand that footprint this year as well. 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? Oh yeah, it's all about making it, you know, simple, easy to access. You know, again, Alka-Seltzer is sold everywhere, you know, baking soda, sold everywhere.

So our idea has always been to put the resources in the hands of people where they are. You know, you don't have to come to Houston to celebrate World Space Week. You just do it in Nairobi or wherever you happen to be because these, 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. 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 because of a kid? Again, we don't normally put on events ourselves, but we organized a zero-g airplane flight. for, again, their teenagers, because they have to be a certain age to fly legally. And 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. And the next year we had kids from all over the world fly all holy hands floating in zero-g. Of course, this, you know, you know, it kind of. probably to follow up with as many as we can, but there are millions of experience 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, you know, 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. And 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.

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. I mean, we do some top down, we do some bottoms up, top down, be going to the UN Space Committee where all the space fairing nations send delegations and, you know, the copious and, you know, encourage them and through IAF and other means.

And bottoms up is just kind of going out through social media. This interview today, I hope I inspire your listeners to do something during World Space We 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.

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? Oh my gosh, more than I... Well, you know, my standard answer is what are you doing during World Space Week? My answer is nothing.

That's the one way. 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, you know, all kinds of interesting things. You've seen a lot of really, really cool events. Someday we'll publish a book and talk about them all. There's so many. That would be a really cool book. I mean, just imagine how many lives. have been touched by this. And you probably, you know, 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, you know, unfathomable. You probably can't track the numbers, but I'm sure it's huge. Yeah, it's huge. And as you can see, I mean, the same.

space industry is growing and more people are working in it because they read an ad in the paper. I mean, these people probably studied, you know, 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, you know, again, you know, launch vehicles, satellites, huge, you know, 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. These are, you know, some of whom, you know, 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 it's been any really good research on that, but it's just intuitive that many have been touched. Absolutely. I mean, 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. I mean, all those moments along the way changed my life. And that's just one tiny, one person in the vast sea of humans out there. For someone who's hearing this right now and thinking to themselves, like, 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?

Many different ways. I mean, the simplest way, you know, sitting in your easy chair is share your opinions on space to say, hey, it's World Space Week. You know, do a hashtag WSW 2026. And just, you know, 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 you have people over and watch space movies, you know, get the library to feature your spacebooks, go set up a table to promote the planetary society.

You know, for those who are really interested, you know, of course, we're always looking for help at the national levels. We have national coordinators, local coordinators. And we're at the global level, you know, so reach out to us at the WorldSpaceweek.org if folks really want to play a role at the global level because they have more time. Well, that would be wonderful, right? I mean, 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. Yeah, I mean, I've volunteered all these years, right? But I get paid in other ways, not only the satisfaction I mentioned of seeing the smiling kids, but the international relationships I 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. 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. Oh, indeed. We are very, very proud. But, you know, I keep saying, hey, we're nowhere near a million events yet. So we got some work to do. You heard them. We've got to get out there and do it, you guys. Come on. Everybody do something during World Space Week. 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 and the media, social media, reaches more people, and 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. 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. I hope so.

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. I will try to find some time. Thank you, though. I really appreciate the chance to talk to you and your listeners and give me a little more information about World Space Week. 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 slash 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. I mean, we're all in this space together, right? Thanks so much, Dennis. We'll be right back after the short break.

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-sands 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 Los 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 slash travel to learn more and save your spot. I hope to see you there. 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 Geryl's 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, Aisa Stahl, about Swift's legacy, what went wrong with the rescue,

and what it all means for the future of our aging space telescopes. hopes. Hey, Asa. Hey, great to be here. Good to have you on, although a bit of a somber story here. I was really hoping this was going to turn out. Yeah, I would say bittersweet because Swift had or has had a really, really good run. It is just a little bit of a maybe an op-y type moment where it's like goodnight sweet prince. 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, way longer than that. So in the end, I can't be too upset about it. But, you know, 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. Well, I don't know. I think that this one was pretty cute. It still is. I have for now. 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 Geryl's Swift Observatory? 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 caused. 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. It's 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 merger. So like neutron stars merging, black holes merging. And sometimes what we call title disruption events, when a star is falling into a black hole, is getting ripped apart. So kind of the coolest stuff in space, you know,

that isn't typically on the planetary society's menu of exploring worlds, finding life, all the other stuff that, you know, kind of 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. 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, right? 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. Yes, it's all connected. And another way to look at it, we're 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 rays, potentially being a limiting factor for how much life can arise and spread throughout the universe because they would just, if one of these hit the earth, everything would be over.

We'd be done so. It'd be, yeah, game over. That'd be really bad. Another thing, though, that I didn't really understand until I was learning more about the Swift Observatory recently. It's like, I thought it was either an acronym or, you know, Neil Geryl 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? Yeah, I also did not realize this.

I thought that it was named Neil Geryl Swift. after the principal investigator, the former principal investigator of the mission, Neal-Garreal 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 and its observations. It's agile. That's like what's at the heart of this mission. But at the same time, when its former principal investigator, Neil Gerelles 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. Well, with that capability, you know, 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? Oh, man, there's so much stuff. It did so many cool things. And settled out of records.

It discovered the most distant gamma ray burst ever. It found the first ever supernova we'd ever seen as it was exploding just by sheer luck. So cool. Yeah, and you can watch that video. What do you mean luck? I believe it was looking at that same patch of sky just by chance of looking at a different gamry burst that saw this one. And you can watch this video.

You can look up Supernova Ads 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 Hole. It's discovered new categories of gamma-ray bursts. It has seen the radiation associated with gravitational wave events like compact object mergers. I mean, 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. That is a lot of science. I'm glad we got so many years with this thing and ended up surviving almost 22 years. 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, you know, we're dealing with the circumstance where, unfortunately, this thing is kind of falling out of orbit. What's causing that to happen? It's atmospheric drag, you know, 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 spreading up against stuff, you know, like moving through. molasses, but extremely, extremely thin. And so eventually things decay and they fall back to it. This happened with the widefield infrared surveyor. So wise or they got renamed it to Neo-Wise. I think I got that acronym right. A couple years ago, that was, I think, a pretty similar type of thing where it was designed to last few years and that blasting 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, you know, it's orbit just decayed and it burned up in the atmosphere.

Yeah, I think we're seeing something, too, that happened with our light sail mission, which is that solar maximum is actually impacting how fast this thing is coming down, which is really fascinating. Yeah, it's too bad. I mean, 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 that spells danger to something like Swift. So the idea with this, this rescue mission was to prevent that. And it had to happen before October or so was the idea that that's when the atmosphere drag would, it would be too low down the atmosphere. It would be unsavable. We're both talking about this the way we are because that mission didn't work out. Yeah. I mean, 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? It was a pretty quick contract. Like where I was just saying, they only have so much time before this thing deorbited. And so whatever they was going to come up, they had to do it. Yeah, was there something. Just a swift contract, if you will. Oh, no. Yes, it was a very swift-s-script contract for about $30 million to this private company called Catalyst Space. And they built the spacecraft called Link Plus that in Catalyst in general, I believe their business model is around, you know, satellite servicing essentially. Like they will, if you send your satellite up there and then you're like, oh, shoot, we forgot something or we messed up.

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 the, how we think about launches is kind of final. It's up there. There's nothing else we can do except, you know, send commands to it and hope that they fix the situation. Unfortunately, that is the position that Calis space itself found itself in when it sent up the Lake spacecraft to rendezvous with Swift.

And then it has these three arms. Arms is kind of a generous word. They're weird. like it's almost like the underside of a folding table, these like accordiony, pincery things that are supposed to grip on to Swift. And that would have been the real challenge because Swift wasn't designed to be grabbed onto. They would have 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, you know, give it a hug of life of accelerate, hop away from Earth, and re-boost it. it gets a greater lifetime. The spacecraft, the links 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. That's a bummer. But at the same time, I mean, my understanding is that even though they're not actually going

to try to fully grapple this spacecraft, they're still going to try to do some kind of rendezvous just as a test round, essentially. Yeah, because there's a lot that you can still learn from doing this sort of thing. Because you can imagine just like with NeoWise two years ago, this is going to keep happening. You know, we're going to, NASA is 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, you know, launching a new mission to just go back up and try to reboot 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'd just been like, ah, well, that's a billion dollars. Oh, well, you know, it's nice to be able to have this option. And so developing this capability, it's definitely valuable. Yeah. We have had so many amazing telescopes over the years that we can no longer use. I mean, anything that you use to see this kind of higher end of the spectrum is always a ridiculous speed 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. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just good economics. These things are an investment, their taxpayer investment. And for the same reason that it would be silly to shut them down prematurely through the 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, you know, for pretty little money, do amazing science that no other mission is planned to really quite replace right now. But now that the rescue mission has sadly not worked. I mean, what happens to the spacecraft now? 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 that'll stay in orbit or any debris that'll pose a danger to anyone actually on Earth. And it probably won't even be like 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. Yeah. It's a sad little end. Is Swift actually still? operating or has it already kind of stopped doing its thing? Yeah, they stopped having it do its thing a while back, I believe, several months ago in preparation

for, you know, this mission and also because they want to, I think, conserve the resources it has, assuming it would, you know, hopefully have another shot. Yeah. This isn't the only telescope that we have that's kind of 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, say, saving Hubble? Yeah, I certainly hope so because that would be utterly tragic.

And you know that Isaacman himself, that before he was administrator, was trying to lobby for a mission to re-boost Hubble and offered to foot the bill, which was very, magnanimous, but at the time, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 intended to. I'll 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 re-boost it. Or maybe we send a spacecraft to re-boost it and it bongs into it. And it's an orbital debris nightmare. And, you know, you destroy a piece of like humanity's cultural heritage and an immensely productive scientific instrument that could have made, you know, who knows what discovery is. that would be awful if we accidentally crashed into Hubble, can you imagine? But almost worth the risk, you know, honestly.

But, you know, it brings up a good point, which is like this mission, even if things hadn't gone weird with it, right? Would have 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, you know, having a plan for how to re-boost them if this is a viable technique. Like maybe we can standardize this for the future. 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, you know, regardless of whether it should be re-boostable, should be serviceable. And so I know, for example, that like with the Habital Worlds Observatory, and that mission is just in concept phase, right? 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 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 up front 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.

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? Well, like I said before, there are other Gamma Re observatories. They're not like the sort of quick swivel, you know, first responder type of thing. You know, Fermi does Gamma Re 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, discovered thousands of Gameraibers, but something like 1800 by its 20th anniversary. Wow. 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, you know, compared to what Swift has done, it will not have the same impact just in terms of the numbers of gamma reburts detecting. But if it lasts for 20 years instead of three, then we would be in a great position again. I mean, thankfully, we don't expect a gamma ray burst to go off anywhere near us, right? 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, I mean, come on,

who doesn't want to know more about some of the most violent extreme events in the entire universe? Yeah, and the most complicated. And they're at the forefront of this whole other burgeoning field in astronomy of multi-messinger 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, I mean, I mean, 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. Well, I feel bad for everyone on the mission who I'm sure was really hoping that this was going to turn out, right?

And also for Catalyst, who spent all this time to try to save the mission, right? 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. It's 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. Yeah, no, I think it would have been icing on the cake. It would have been like a cherry on top. And maybe this particular, you know, frosting or whatever didn't. sculpt out the way we wanted to, but we learned about how to make the next one do that. So yeah, it already already had a fantastic mission. And I think it's definitely something to celebrate. 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. Yeah, make a wish upon it. I wish for another Swift. Thanks so much, Asa. Thanks. 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 Betz, 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. Hi, Sarah. 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. Yeah, it's really, it's World Space Week. I mean, space, world, fun. 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. That's funny. Yeah, Goddard, Ligand-fueled rockets, crazy, crazy people out on Anne Effie's farm launching dangerous rockets. You got to love it.

Okay, so who is Aunt Effie? I'm like, I only learned more about Goddard this year because of the 100th anniversary. So there's like so much of the story that I didn't know before. All right. He was named after NASA Center. and you know we all need to learn more about Ann 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 Anne Fis 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 in 184 feet away in a cabbage patch. I wonder how the cabbage is fared. Just my cabbages. I hope they're Anne Fie's cabbages and I 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 like 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. Can you imagine you're just like launching something on Aunt Effie's farm and inadvertently create the age of rocket, tree. 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.

This is awesome. I see Bill and Ted four. Oh, that would be sweet. Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, picking up the science people. Show them what it led to. Most excellent. 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. Yeah, 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 Lack, 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.

Like, 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, you know, if someone had sat down to the person writing that article for the New York Times and explained Newton's laws, maybe they wouldn't have printed that. Yeah, they probably would have if they were misapplying Newton's laws. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, not, 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 a 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. Terrible idea.

You look terrified. Very limited fuel source. Yeah, it's not the best. That was one of his competitors tried that and RIP. Did you launch any model rockets or anything when you were younger? Oh, yeah, totally. I definitely launched them and launched them and launched them. 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, you know, maybe don't light the whole hillside on fire? Yeah, people get really tense for some odd reason when you do. I mean, 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. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, we had one of my, 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. 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. I think was there, was there? No, not that time. 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 densest planet? 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 like this.

A lot of mercury is an iron, big iron core. But we win. Earth. Really? It 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, the mercury is denser is just if you do, 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 get 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? I mean, go Earth. We win. Yes. Yes. There you have it.

There's a random space fact. That's awesome. All right, everybody, go out there, look on 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 good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio.

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to build that bright future in space at planetary.org slash join. Mark Hilverta and Ray Paoletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreyer is the host of our monthly Space Policy Edition and Matt Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer Planetary Radio.

And until next week, Ad Astra.