NASA spacecraft briefly blinded by record-breaking gamma-ray burst

SPACE.com : On Wednesday, an unexpectedly bright gamma-ray burst temporarily shut down NASA’s robotic spacecraft Swift. Launched in 2004 to detect and image bursts of radiation emitted from exploding stars (including, ironically, gamma-ray bursts), Swift carries three different telescopes that image in optical, x-ray, and gamma-ray wavebands. This particular burst occurred some 5 billion years ago. Although the unexpected burst temporarily blinded Swift, scientists were able to quickly put it back online and recover the data recorded.