The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is doomed to burn up in Earth鈥檚 atmosphere in the coming months, after a high-risk effort to save it failed.

On Wednesday 19 August, NASA said in a that an ongoing issue with the LINK spacecraft, built by US start-up Katalyst Space, meant that an effort to dock with and boost Swift in orbit would no longer be attempted.

鈥淣ASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did with this mission,鈥� NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in the statement. 鈥淭his is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting.鈥�

LINK was launched in July on a mission to save Swift, a rapid-response telescope used to observe brief celestial events such as gamma-ray bursts. Swift has been steadily dropping in orbit since its launch in 2004 due to atmospheric drag. The $30 million rescue mission, designed and built in less than a year, was a last-ditch attempt to boost the telescope back into a higher orbit.

Soon after launching, however, LINK began to spin out of control. While Katalyst later stabilised the spacecraft, it was deemed to have to make the boost possible.

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鈥淜atalyst designed, developed, and launched an experimental spacecraft to go after an ambitious mission on an aggressive timeline,鈥� the company鈥檚 CEO, Ghonhee Lee, said in a statement. 鈥淲e took on this high-risk, high-reward challenge and are proud of the milestones we reached along the way.鈥�

LINK will still rendezvous with Swift, but will no longer attempt to grab the telescope with its robotic arms. That means Swift will have a limited amount of final observations it can do before it re-enters the atmosphere by the end of the year, with no replacement telescope currently in the works.

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The first images of the impact crater caused by an out-of-control SpaceX craft have emerged. Part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon at about 8700 kilometres per hour on 5 August.

The images were taken by the Danuri lunar orbiter, operated by the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA). They show both before and after the impact and reveal that the crash did indeed leave a crater.

The craft in question was the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched in January last year, carrying the Hakuto-R spacecraft from commercial company ispace 鈥� which, ironically,聽also crashed into the moon聽during an unsuccessful landing attempt.

Astronomers around the world had trained their telescopes on the spot in the hope of observing the impact, but its tiny size made it virtually impossible for amateur observers to make out.

KASA revealed the images and warned that videos being shared on social media purporting to show footage of the impact are fake.

It is thought that the almost 14-metre-long, 4000-kilogram Falcon upper stage impacted the moon at 5.35am BST on 5 August, near to Einstein crater 鈥� named for physicist Albert Einstein 鈥� which is towards the edge of the visible moon from Earth.

NASA had predicted prior to impact that the crash would create a crater 18 metres wide and 4 metres deep. Further images from a NASA lunar orbiter will provide more detail of the site in the coming days and weeks.

at the Open University, UK, says the images make it hard to be certain about the nature of the crater, but that higher-quality ones should emerge in time.

鈥淭he moon鈥檚 got about 100 million natural craters in that size range, so in the scheme of things, this is nothing,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou鈥檒l get several a decade of this kind of size forming naturally.鈥�

Unlike the Apollo lander sites, which have been photographed in great detail, the SpaceX impact site may not show any visible evidence of the craft because of its high impact speed, says Rothery. But the ejected regolith will probably be lighter in colour than the surrounding surface, at least until it is weathered by sunlight over tens of millions of years.

Some had suggested in the wake of the impact that the new crater be named after SpaceX owner Elon Musk, but the suggestion has been shot down by astronomers.

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, chair of the International Astronomical Union Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature, which oversees the naming of celestial objects and features, says it wouldn鈥檛 be in line with rules on such matters.

鈥淔ormal feature naming is restricted to natural geological formations that serve a long-term cartographic and scientific reference purpose for the global community,鈥� she says. 鈥淪pacecraft impact sites are frequently given informal or working nicknames by mission teams.聽The [SpaceX] mission team can give it any nickname they like, but it will not become an official name.鈥�

Furthermore, if a crater is named to commemorate a person, this person has to have been deceased for at least three years, says Schulz, while Musk is still alive.