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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

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Stefan Immler: For hundreds of years, thousands of years,

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humans have thought the universe is a very static place.

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If you go out a night and look into the night sky you will see that things don't really

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change much. The universe appeared very static for a long time.

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We now know this is not true. The universe is a highly dynamic

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place and things are happening all the time. Every single second

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a star explodes in a gigantic supernova explosion

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somewhere in the universe. And we have to go and find it. We have to build instruments that

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are capable of finding those unforeseen events.

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John Nousek: Way back in 1998 we were at a scientific

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meeting in Boulder, Colorado. And I was invited to a

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you know, invitation only meeting.

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And at that meeting six of us got together and we came up with the idea creating

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Swift. It was a group of people from Goddard and from Penn State.

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Alan Wells: Swift set out to combine

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gamma-ray instruments that could roughly

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find out where gamma rays may be coming from, but only

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with a very crude estimate, and then

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through the design of this remarkable spacecraft,

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to spin that spacecraft rapidly across the sky, and

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point an X-ray telescope and an optical/ultraviolet

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telescope at the possible location of the gamma-ray burst.

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Neil Gehrels: Whenever a gamma-ray burst goes off, which happens about

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twice a week, the satellite detects the gamma-ray burst and it

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sends a message down to the ground, and it goes out on a network to our

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cellphones and we're paged. Stefan: What I loved being a member of Swift team

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is carrying a Blackberry on the side of my hip that became

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almost like a part of my body. And every time

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Swift discovered something unforeseen, or a gamma-ray burst went off,

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the Blackberry would start vibrating and I would run to the nearest computer as fast as I could.

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And this is something I miss now, not

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working anymore for Swift, this excitement. That things can happen at any time,

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and you don't know what it is. Neil: I have on two

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occasions gotten a gamma-ray burst alert while I was giving a lecture

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about Swift. And so I told the audience

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that 'here's the new gamma-ray burst coming in' and we actually one time

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got it on the screen and watched the data as they were coming in

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in front of the audience. Caryl Gronwall: I was woken up by

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GRB 090423. It was 4 in the morning, it was really

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annoying, it was five years into the mission so GRBs were not so new

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and exciting then. And I was like 'oh yeah, yet another GRB' dealt

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with it, went back to sleep, woke up the next morning and there was

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information from ground-based telescopes that had observed this gamma-ray burst

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in the infrared that were implying that it was a very distant gamma-ray burst

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at redshift greater than 8, that was very exciting. And the next

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night, telescopes in Hawaii

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were able to confirm that redshift, that it's at a redshift of z of 8.2,

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that means that gamma-ray burst went off more than

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13 billion years ago. it's 13 billion light-years away. we're seeing light

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that, from a star that was only 700 million years after

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the Big Bang. That's one of the most distant objects that's ever

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been detected, that was very cool. Jamie Kennea: In my case I had a

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different experience where it was Thanksgiving, and

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my family and I had spent a large amount of time working to prepare the

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Thanksgiving dinner, we had friends 'round, and everything was ready, the food was on the table,

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and right as I put my fork into my turkey, the

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my phone went off, something had exploded in the universe, Swift had detected

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it, and we had to go to work. So, it doesn't always

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happen at convenient times, but it is still exciting.

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John: Basically, I'm on call 24 hours a day, so it's hard to

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decide where my personal life starts and my Swift professional life ends.

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Judith Racusin: As the astronomy and

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astrophysics community has engaged with Swift, the scientists

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have learned new ways to use the observatory, and its

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ability to rapidly follow-up new sources has been

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seen as a really incredibly useful tool. And so Swift has

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evolved from spending most of its time observing gamma-ray bursts and following them

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for sometimes weeks or months afterwords, to doing more

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science that's proposed by the community to study other types of objects. Neil: We look at

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supernovae, novae, black hole transients,

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comets, flaring stars, all different

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kinds of objects. John: Basically every year, Swift makes a new

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discovery that changes some field of astrophysics. We have made many, many

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discoveries in other areas. We've discovered something called a tidal disruption event.

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That's when a star is falling into a black hole and gets ripped to shreds and

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we see the light from that collapse onto the black hole. That's very, very exciting.

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We've made important discoveries about comets: how much water and how much

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other material there is in comets that people didn't know before. We have

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actually seen a supernova--a star that blows up--at the moment

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when the light broke out from the surface of the exploding star.

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Every year for the ten years of Swift we've had one of these really

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important discoveries. Chryssa Kouveliotou: It is the Cadillac of

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satellites. It does everything in the transient field.

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In one package, and mind you,

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this is a small package, it's an explorer mission, we have

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a huge amount of capability. Jamie: Swift's ability

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to observe many objects in one day I think is what makes it special, as well as its

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ability to respond very quickly to new events in the universe.

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No other mission is as agile as we are. Gianpiero Tagliaferri: Swift performs

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every day five to seven targets of opportunity, so

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sources are requested by the astronomers to be observed, and they are

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observed every day. And this is a very powerful capability that the

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community now is taking advantage of.

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Brad Cenko: I new the instrument, I new its capabilities, but I've been extremely

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impressed with the team of people that behind the scenes make the

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mission work. There is a group of duty scientists,

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mission planners, the flight operations team,

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that make sure that we can continue to observe

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as many targets as we do, that we can continue to do

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the rapid response that is really unique to the observatory.

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And without such a dedicated crew of people behind the scenes,

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I don't think Swift would be nearly as successful as it has been.

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Patrizia Caraveo: Swift mission has been extremely

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successful in the past, up to now, and

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it will no doubt continue to be successful

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in the future. And I am sure

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that a lot of serendipitous science is just

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waiting for us. Chryssa: The universe has

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a lot of secrets that have not yet been revealed yet. We do

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believe that Swift can and will reveal

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many more mysteries and puzzles in the universe.

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Stefan: We don't know what will happen over the next ten years, hoping that Swift

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will still give us exciting data. But what we do know

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is that Swift will give us exciting new data. Because of

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its pure nature, this is what it was built for: to study

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new, unforeseen, unexpected events. And they will inevitably happen.

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Neil: It's been a part of my life--every day--

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for the last 20 years. I love it. It's produced so

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much great science and, you know, it's been very fulfilling.

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But every day I think about this

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delicate instrumentation in the harsh environment

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orbiting the Earth, and how it's able to keep going

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all of those years. And I very often will just look up at the sky and think about

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Swift. It's true.

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Beeping]

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[Beeping]