NASA’s Swift space telescope is expected to fall back to Earth in the coming days after a failed rescue attempt. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in November 2004 and spent almost 22 years studying powerful explosions in space.

On Friday, NASA joined in on the tributes by posting a photo on social media taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that appears to show galaxies colliding in a way that resembles the USS Enterprise, the fictional starship Stewart captained on the show as Jean-Luc Picard.

Budget gutted and shuttles grounded, the federal agency can only appeal to the private sector for help.

The nail-biting incident happened just two weeks ago, when the Deep Space Network didn't receive a call from Voyager 1 on either Oct. 18 or 19. But before the agency could send repair commands, the spacecraft, now outside the solar system, signaled back on Oct. 20. No communication outages have happened since.

Hubble has one advantage over Swift. Astronauts fitted it with a soft-capture mechanism on the last shuttle visit in 2009, which should make docking easier. Astronomers expect no replacement for its visible and ultraviolet vision before NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s.

NASA is taking another major step toward sending astronauts back to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

NASA’s Expedition 75 astronauts carried out virtual reality and super intelligence studies during a busy week aboard the ISS.

Google and NASA are collaborating on an autonomous robotic medical assistant to support astronauts during deep-space missions, enhancing crew safety and operational efficiency.