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Swift Observatory in safe mode as NASA investigates issue:

NASA has temporarily paused science aboard the Swift Observatory after noticing a potential equipment failure.

An issue with NASA's Swift Observatory has forced it to suspend science operations and enter safe mode while the team investigates. The space-based telescope is not one of NASA's best-known missions, but it has played a key role in investigating an astronomical phenomenon called gamma-ray bursts.

The telescope, originally named the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer and later renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, experienced a problem earlier this week suspected to be related to faulty hardware. "On the evening of Tuesday, January 18, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory entered into safe mode, suspending pointed science observations," NASA wrote in a brief update. "The mission team is investigating a possible failure of one of the spacecraft's reaction wheels as the cause."

The reaction wheels are components that allow the spacecraft to rotate to a very precise degree, which helps to keep the telescope pointed in one direction. This is important for Swift's mission to study gamma-ray bursts as this requires a high degree of sensitivity. The bursts last a few minutes at most, and a few milliseconds at least, so Swift has to locate these events quickly before they disappear.

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