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[Music] Announcer: Ten, Nine,

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Eight, seven, six

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five, four, three, engines start

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one, zero, and liftoff of the... Narrator 1: NASA's Swift

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satellite rode to orbit on aboard a Delta rocket on November 20th, 2004,

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and is still going strong. Swift's unique instrumentation

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allows it to quickly locate an interesting high-energy outburst,

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automatically determine its position, and rapidly investigate it with

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ultraviolet, optical, and X-ray telescopes. Swift's

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versatility has led to amazing observations across a wide swath of astronomy.

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Narrator 2: A seven-year campaign to monitor the center of our galaxy with

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Swift, has given astronomers a unique bounty. It has more than

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doubled the number of bright X-ray flares observed from our galaxy's central black hole

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and led to the discovery of a rare, highly magnetized, neutron

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star. Narrator 3: Swift's primary target is gamma-ray bursts,

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or GRBS, the biggest and most mysterious explosions

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in the cosmos. On April 13, 2010, the spacecraft

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Burst Alert Telescope cataloged its 500th GRB.

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Narrator 4: On September 16, 2012, NASA's Swift noticed

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a new, and rapidly brightening X-ray source. Additional X-ray

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behavior told astronomers that the object at the center of this activity was previously

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unknown black hole.

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Narrator 2: Swift and other satellites used X-ray telescopes to monitor interactions between

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a pair of gigantic stars. As the stars approach each other,

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their fierce outflows, called stellar winds, crash together at several

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million miles an hour. Reaching temperatures of millions of degrees, and creating

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X-rays. Narrator 5: The Swift

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UV mosaics allow us to study the evolution of young stars in the LMC and

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SMC, all in one view. These

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images are the highest-resolution wide-field surveys of the galaxies

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at ultraviolet wavelengths.

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Narrator 1: On January 21, 2014, astronomers

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discovered an exceptionally close stellar explosion in M82,

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a galaxy located about 12 million light-years away.

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Swift's ultraviolet/optical telescope imaged the brightening supernova the

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very next day. Narrator 3: When a neighboring red

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dwarf star, called DG CVn, erupted in an enormous X-ray

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flare on April 23, 2014, Swift caught it and

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monitored the eruption. The blast was some 10,000 times more

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powerful than the biggest flare we've ever seen from our sun.

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Narrator 4: Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by

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Swift established a previously unrecognized class of GRBs called

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ultra-long gamma-ray bursts. Astronomers think they arise from

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the catastrophic death of supergiant stars hundreds of times larger than the sun.

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Narrator 2: On March 28, 2011,

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Swift detected intense X-ray emission from a galaxy's supermassive black hole.

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Astronomers realized they were seeing the signature of a sun-like star

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being shredded by the black hole. Infalling gas was captured in

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an accretion disk, and powered an X-ray jet. Narrator 1: A

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record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy

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wowed astronomers around the world in April 2013. The

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blast produced the highest-energy light ever detected from a GRB.

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UV, optical, X-ray and gamma ray observation

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from Swift provided valuable data. Narrator 4: Asteroids

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crash all the time, but the effects dissipate quickly, so catching the aftermath

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of a recent collision in 2010 was something special.

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Swift's ultraviolet vision helped astronomers rule out the possibility they were seeing a comet.

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Narrator 3: A GRB so bright it could have been

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seen by the naked eye? That's what Swift and ground-based telescopes

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detected on March 19, 2008, thanks to a GRB jet

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aimed almost directly at Earth. Incredibly, the light from this dying star

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began its travels 7.5 billion years ago.

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Narrator 2: On April 29, 2009, a five-second-long burst of

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gamma rays became the farthest explosion yet identified by Swift.

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Its light had been traveling for 13.14 billion years, placing it

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among the most distant objects known. Narrator 4: Using Swift

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observations, astronomers identified an abrupt slowdown in the rotation of a

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neutron star. An event dubbed an "anti-glitch."

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The discovery holds important clues for understanding neutron star interiors,

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which contain some of the densest matter in the universe. Narrator 3: Swift

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observations, combined with theoretical research, have shown that

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colliding neutron stars are a likely explanation for gamma-ray bursts

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lasting less than two seconds.

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Narrator 1: NASA's Swift mission ushered in a new era of research into gamma-ray bursts.

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As Swift begins its second decade of operation, its

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speed, flexibility and versatility, make it an important

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platform for studying the most energetic and rapidly-changing phenomena

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in the cosmos. [Beeping]

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[Beeping]