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The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission

Swift was launched at 17:16 GMT on 20th November 2004

Status of Swift

Swift spacecraft

Swift is part of NASA's medium explorer program, with the hardware being developed by an international team from the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy, with additional scientific involvement by France, Japan, Germany, Denmark, Spain, and South Africa. It is the first multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray burst science. The main aims of the Swift mission are to:
  • determine the origin of gamma-ray bursts
  • classify gamma-ray bursts and search for new types
  • determine how the blast-wave evolves and interacts with the surroundings
  • use gamma-ray bursts to study the early Universe
  • perform the first sensitive hard X-ray survey of the sky

How Swift operates

BAT, XRT and UVOT fields of view

  1. Burst Alert Telescope triggers on GRB and calculates position to within 4-arc-min.
  2. Spacecraft autonomously slews to GRB position in 20-70 seconds.
  3. X-ray Telescope determines position to within ~5-arc-sec.
  4. UV/Optical Telescope images field and transmits finding chart to ground.
As described in the Instruments on-board Swift section, the Burst Alert Telescope is the instrument which detects elevated gamma-ray emission. The BAT has a large field of view, allowing it to detect elevated gamma-ray emission from a large portion of the sky at any one time.

After this initial detection, Swift slews rapidly and autonomously, re-pointing itself to bring the detected burst into the field of view of the sensitive narrow field instruments (XRT and UVOT), which then observe the afterglow. Swift will provide spectra and multi-wavelength light-curves for the duration of the afterglow and, where possible, distance determinations. This will enable the most comprehensive study of GRBs and their host galaxies to date.

Naming Convention

New sources discovered by Swift will be designated SWIFT JHHMM.m +/- DDMM or SWIFT JHHMMSS.s +/- DDMMSS

Follow the links below to learn more about Swift and gamma-ray bursts themselves or read the NASA Swift fact-sheet.

Instruments on-board Swift
UK involvement in Swift
Institutional Responsibilities 		   Gamma-Ray Bursts: an Introduction
Gamma-Ray Burst research at Leicester
Swift in the Press

UK Swift Science Data Centre
Last updated 2010 March 15
Web page maintained by Kim Page ()