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Astronomers last week lost their battle to keep the Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory aloft when NASA decided to dump the telescope in the Pacific on 3
June. The nine-year-old spacecraft lost one gyroscope in December. Although the
two remaining gyros can safely control the telescope’s descent into a remote
piece of ocean, if another one fails NASA is worried that it could not determine
the 15-tonne observatory’s landing place. Some astronomers are angry that their
proposal for a safe no-gyro re-entry was ignored. “Disgust is a word that comes
to mind,” says William Paciesas of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.…