Wish Standards Office Investigates Whether Satellite That Burned Up Like Shooting Star Grants Wishes

WASHINGTON—NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day reported that the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory re-entered Earth's atmosphere on November 4 at 7:39 EST over the North Sumatra region of Indonesia after nearly 22 years of service, and that it burned on reentry like a shooting star. Within hours, the Office of Celestial Wish Standards opened Docket 22-SW to determine whether any wishes made on it are legally binding.

"Our sample size is one satellite and zero control satellites," said OCWS lead statistician Dr. Prudence Halvorsen, 58. She added that the office had requested a matched placebo telescope to be dropped over a comparable patch of sky. "We cannot ethically randomize which telescopes fall out of the sky. We asked. Twice."

APOD notes that Swift carried an X-ray telescope, a gamma-ray telescope and an Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope for studying the fastest and most energetic explosions in the universe. The office's draft eligibility framework therefore assigns jurisdiction by instrument. Gamma-ray-tier wishes must concern "something exploding very quickly." Ultraviolet-tier wishes are limited to matters involving blacklight posters, pending appeal.

The framework has already drawn complaints. Gerald Fenwick, 47, of Lima, OH, filed a formal appeal after his wish for a new pickup truck was routed to the X-ray tier. It came back stamped "insufficient energy; please resubmit as a supernova." Wishers must now attach a timestamp, a sky position and a signed affidavit stating they were "looking roughly upward." Wishes made on the satellite during its 22 years of ordinary orbiting have been set aside as "premature."

The office's 412-page interim study qualifies every finding with phrases such as "underpowered" and "may not generalize to other satellites." Its one-paragraph press release, by contrast, calls the matter "well in hand," "historic" and "essentially settled." It is a crisp, confident document with generous margins and an excellent font. (The study is also available.) Readers seeking the actual satellite facts are referred to NASA's November 6 Astronomy Picture of the Day entry, which states, "It is time to say goodbye to NASA 's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory."

At press time, OCWS had issued a second press release announcing that the first press release had passed peer review, which Baffled considers the stronger of the two documents.