Season 8 Episode 12: NASA gets a boost from Swift and Pets vs Serious Mental Health Issues

Send us Fan Mail A space telescope is quietly slipping toward Earth, and the rescue plan sounds like science fiction: send up an autonomous robotic spacecraft, match speed in low Earth orbit, grab the aging observatory, and gently push it higher before it burns up. We walk through the attempted save of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, why Swift is so important to astronomy, and how it acts like NASA’s first responder for gamma ray bursts that vanish in minutes but can outshine entire galax...