Intro music.
More than thirty years since their accidental discovery, gamma-ray bursts are still a mystery to scientists.
These brief, fierce explosions occur randomly each day, making them very hard to study.
But NASA's Swift spacecraft and its trio of telescopes will leave gamma-ray bursts nowhere to hide.
The highly sensitive Burst Alert Telescope will be the first instrument to detect a new blast.
It will feed this information to the X-Ray Telescope and UltraViolet/Optical Telescope, which will further pinpoint the burst's location.
Using light energy data, known as spectra, the X-Ray Telescope will reveal more about the environment between us and the explosion,
and what chemicals were produced.
The UltraViolet/Optical Telescope will also take pictures of the bursts in ultraviolet and visible light.
Swift is expected to study about 100 gamma-ray bursts a year.