NASA’s Swift observatory is scheduled for launch Wednesday, Nov. 17. Liftoff aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket is targeted at 12:09 p.m., EST, the opening of a one-hour launch window. Liftoff is from Pad 17-A on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Fla. If postponed the next launch opportunity is 12:09 p.m. EST, Nov. 18.<\/p>\n
Swift is a NASA spacecraft designed to pinpoint the location of gamma-ray bursts. It can quickly turn and point its instruments to catch the gamma-ray burst. Swift can study both the burst and its afterglow. Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known in the universe, distant yet fleeting explosions that appear to signal the births of black holes.<\/p>\n
The bursts last from only a few milliseconds to a few minutes. They emit more than 100 billion times as much energy. as the sun annually, never to appear in the same spot again. The afterglow following the initial gamma-ray flash can linger in X-ray light, visible light and radio waves for hours or weeks, providing detailed information about the burst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA’s Swift observatory is scheduled for launch Wednesday, Nov. 17. Liftoff aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket is targeted at 12:09 p.m., EST, the opening of a one-hour launch window.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-NASA"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/612598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}