For twenty-two years, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has served as humanity's sentinel for the universe's most violent and fleeting events — gamma-ray bursts that flare and vanish in seconds, leaving only light as evidence. Now, after a failed robotic rescue mission and an unusually restless sun that has thickened Earth's atmosphere and hastened its descent, Swift faces an ending that was always possible but never quite expected to arrive so soon. NASA has chosen not to wait in silence: two of its three instruments have been reactivated, and the observatory continues its work, gathering wh