WEBVTT

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Intro music.

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More than thirty years since their accidental discovery, gamma-ray bursts are still a mystery to scientists.

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These brief, fierce explosions occur randomly each day, making them very hard to study.

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But NASA's Swift spacecraft and its trio of telescopes will leave gamma-ray bursts nowhere to hide.

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The highly sensitive Burst Alert Telescope will be the first instrument to detect a new blast.

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It will feed this information to the X-Ray Telescope and UltraViolet/Optical Telescope, which will further pinpoint the burst's location.

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Using light energy data, known as spectra, the X-Ray Telescope will reveal more about the environment between us and the explosion,

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and what chemicals were produced.

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The UltraViolet/Optical Telescope will also take pictures of the bursts in ultraviolet and visible light.

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Swift is expected to study about 100 gamma-ray bursts a year.

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