All eyes these days may be on NASA’s shiny new exoplanet hunter TESS, but the group’s Kepler space telescope still has some life left in it. The aging spacecraft is one again up and running and, in a brief update to its mission log, NASA has announced that the telescope is back at work once more.

The Kepler spacecraft already has a full 18 missions under its belt, but NASA scientists are hoping that it still has enough power left to push forward. Unfortunately, the telescope is beginning to show its age, and might be somewhat hampered when maneuvering for its latest round of observations.

“The Kepler spacecraft began collecting science data on Aug. 29 for its 19th observation campaign,” NASA explains. “After being roused from sleep mode the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behavior exhibited by one of the thrusters. Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded. It remains unclear how much fuel remains; NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft.”

That might sound dire, but it’s somewhat expected. Kepler, which launched back in 2009, is approaching its tenth year in space. The spacecraft has a finite amount of fuel that it needs in order to maneuver and position its powerful lens at distant objects. Somewhat humorously, the spacecraft has no way of telling its handlers on the ground how much fuel it actually has left, so NASA just has to keep issuing commands until the craft poops out.

Kepler completed its previous science mission earlier this year and was placed into a hibernation state prior to booting back up to allow NASA to download the data it had retrieved. It woke in August, at which point it transferred its data to Earth, but then went back to sleep until August 29th when it woke to begin its latest round of observations.

With well over 2,000 exoplanets already discovered by Kepler, let’s hope the telescope keeps on going for a long time to come. </s> Unwilling to go quietly into that good night, the Kepler Space Telescope is once again gathering scientific data—despite a malfunctioning thruster and painfully low levels of fuel.



With the $600 million Kepler Space Telescope high atop our dead pool lists, this brief report published yesterday by NASA comes as a rather pleasant and unexpected surprise:

The Kepler spacecraft began collecting science data on Aug. 29 for its 19th observation campaign. After being roused from sleep mode the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behavior exhibited by one of the thrusters. Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded. It remains unclear how much fuel remains; NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft.

Incredible. After nine years of active service, a near-death experience in 2013, and 2,327 confirmed exoplanets under its belt, Kepler continues to be the little space-based telescope that could.

Back on August 24, Kepler was put into sleep mode after an anomalous drop in fuel pressure—but not before transmitting data collected during the 18th campaign of the K2 phase of the mission. As the spacecraft hibernated (for the second time in as many months) and possibly waited for death, mission controllers carefully monitored Kepler’s health, trying to figure out if it could participate in another survey, and if so, which functions might still be available.

As it turns out, there’s still some life left in this fighter, with Kepler returning to active duty on August 29—though with some limitations. There’s apparently nothing wrong with Kepler, aside from the low fuel and an issue with one of its eight thrusters. Oh, and the fact that Kepler has only been able to use two of its four reaction control wheels, which it uses to maintain orientation, since 2013.

“One of the eight thrusters had shown unreliable performance, but the team estimated that simply removing the thruster from use during precision pointing firings could result in acceptable system performance,” Alison Hawkes, a spokesperson at NASA’s Ames Research Center, told SpaceNews. “As a result, the changes were made and Campaign 19 was, as it were, joined in progress.”



The cause of the malfunctioning thruster is not known, but the low fuel may have something to do with it. NASA doesn’t really know. But if other thrusters start to fail, it’s a good sign the low fuel has something to do with it.

With one of eight thrusters shut down, Kepler is now less stable against the incoming solar pressure, making the telescope’s precision pointing performance a bit less... precise. NASA won’t know if Kepler is making observations of any quality until the data gets transmitted back to Earth, which should happen in a couple of months. Unless of course, Kepler runs out of fuel, finally ending the mission that began in 2009. Sadly, Kepler doesn’t come with a fuel gauge, so it’s a bit of a guessing game.

The end of the Kepler era is sad, no doubt, but NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) began operations on July 25, 2018. The hunt for distant exoplanets has only just begun. </s> The US space agency's Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel and is being retired after nine and a half years, having helped discover more than 2,600 planets, some of which may hold life, officials said Tuesday.

The unmanned space telescope, which launched in 2009, revealed that billions of hidden planets are in space and revolutionized humanity's understanding of the universe, experts said.

Kepler helped astronomers measure potential planets by glimpsing transits, or moments when planets passed in front of their stars.

Kepler showed that "20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky, planets similar in size to Earth, and located within the habitable zone of their parent stars," NASA said in a statement.

"That means they're located at distances from their parent stars where liquid water -- a vital ingredient to life as we know it -- might pool on the planet surface."

Kepler's demise was "not unexpected and this marks the end of spacecraft operations," said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA, on a conference call with reporters.

Signals that fuel was nearly out were seen two weeks ago.

Scientists were able to get all the data from Kepler down to Earth before it completely ran dry.

NASA said it has decided to retire the spacecraft "within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth."

NASA's retired principal investigator for the Kepler mission, Bill Borucki, described it as an "enormous success."

"We have shown that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy," Borucki said.

NASA has experienced a series of spacecraft problems lately.

NASA's Opportunity rover is stalled on the surface of Mars following a major dust storm that struck in late May and June.

The asteroid-hopping Dawn mission ran out of fuel last month.

The Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory experienced technical problems earlier this month that have since been fully repaired.

NASA says Kepler's mission may be over but its discoveries will be studied for years to come.

The next-generation planet hunter space telescope for NASA, TESS, launched in April and will survey far more cosmic terrain than Kepler.

Both use the same system of detecting planetary transits, or shadows cast as they pass in front of their star.

The new spacecraft will focus on nearby exoplanets, those in the range of 30 to 300 light-years away.

Kepler confirmed a trove of 2,681 planets outside our solar system. However most of these exoplanets were too distant and dim to be examined further.

The far more advanced James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to lift off in 2021, should be able to reveal more about planets' mass, density and the makeup of their atmosphere -- all clues to habitability.

"Because of Kepler, what we think about our place in the universe has changed," said Hertz.

"The Kepler mission has paved the way for future exoplanet studying missions." </s> NASA's planet finder went into sleep mode right after it finished downloading all the data from its previous campaign.

The Kepler Space Telescope is once again ready to embark on a new observation campaign, the 19th to be conducted during its current mission, reports Space.

The planet-finding telescope has recently woken up from yet another programmed slumber and is already scouring the skies in search for new exoplanets. According to NASA, Kepler began collecting data for Campaign 19 on August 29, after the veteran telescope took a short break from work to save up on fuel.

As the Inquisitr recently reported, NASA’s planet seeker was placed in a sort of “nap mode” in early July, due to concerns that its dwindling fuel reserves wouldn’t last long enough for the telescope to beam back the data gathered during Campaign 18.

After napping for four weeks, Kepler woke up on August 2 and started downloading its data to Earth soon after that — a process that was successfully completed on August 9, notes NASA’s Kepler & K2 Science Center.

The Campaign 18 data is currently available online on the telescope’s archive at MAST.

Once the data was safely transmitted back to Earth, Kepler went back to sleep, NASA announced in an August 24 update, and woke up again a few days later, ready to get its science on.

Yet the future of the veteran space telescope, which first launched in 2009, remains uncertain, notes CNET.

Although Kepler is now awake and back on duty, NASA’s expert planet finder experienced a small headache with one of its thrusters during its latest nap and might be facing some issues with its superprecise pointing ability.

“After being roused from sleep mode the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behavior exhibited by one of the thrusters. Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded,” space agency officials stated in a September 5 update.

But the space telescope’s major problem stems from its nearly depleted fuel stores. Kepler has been running low on fuel for quite a while, which is why the July time-out was specifically designed to stop the spacecraft from using any fuel until the Campaign 18 data download, the Inquisitr reported at the time.

“It remains unclear how much fuel remains,” reads the latest mission update, adding that “NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft.”

To date, Kepler has tracked down an impressive 2,652 exoplanets, with 325 of those discovered during its second mission, K2. Kick-started in 2014 after engineers figured out a way to fix a malfunction that halted the telescope’s original mission, K2 is organized in a series of observational campaigns, each one scheduled to last around 80 days.

However, the previous Kepler campaign only lasted for 51 days and was cut short on July 2, when the telescope paused science operations to go into nap mode.

Meanwhile, during Kepler’s month-long slumber, NASA officially began scouring the skies with its new-generation TESS exoplanet seeker, the Inquisitr previously reported.

While there’s no knowing how long Kepler can keep on doing what it does best, the telescope will keep astronomers busy long after its watch has ended. More than 2,700 exoplanet candidates identified by the venerable spacecraft still await to be verified and are bound to add to the total tally of the Kepler legacy. </s> NASA is saying "goodnight" to its pioneering Kepler telescope, which a few

NASA is saying “goodnight” to its pioneering Kepler telescope, which a few months shy of its 10th birthday but years past its expected lifespan, has finally run out of fuel.

The planet-hunting spacecraft, credited with discovering thousands of exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, will be retired and left in its current orbit, a safe distance from Earth, NASA announced Tuesday. Kepler’s transmitter and other instruments will be shut down in the coming days.

Kepler was launched in March 2009 with enough fuel to keep it going for at least six years, according to The Verge. It far surpassed expectations, however, collecting data in deep space for more than nine years. In all, the telescope made more than 2,600 exoplanet discoveries, NASA said.

“As NASA’s first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, said in a statement. “Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm. Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars.”

Kepler searched for alien worlds by looking out for their transits, which are dips in the brightness of stars that could indicate orbiting planets.

“It was like trying to detect a flea crawling across a car headlight when the car was 100 miles away,” William Borucki, who led the original Kepler science team, told AP of the telescope’s technology,

When Kepler’s stabilizing equipment began malfunctioning in 2013, NASA feared it was doomed. But the mission team managed to salvage the telescope after figuring out how to use the pressure of sunlight to balance the spacecraft. Once the fix was made, NASA approved a new mission for the spacecraft, dubbed K2.

Kepler continued to hunt for planets during its K2 phase. As Space.com notes, the spacecraft also studied “a variety of cosmic objects and phenomena, from comets and asteroids in our own solar system to faraway supernova explosions.”

In April, a spacecraft successor to Kepler ― NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS ― was launched.

“TESS builds on Kepler’s foundation with fresh batches of data in its search of planets orbiting some 200,000 of the brightest and nearest stars to the Earth, worlds that can later be explored for signs of life,” NASA said.

Calling Kepler’s mission “stunningly successful,” TESS project scientist Padi Boyd told AP that the retired telescope has shown us that “we live in a galaxy that’s teeming with planets.”

Boyd also noted that our exploration of the cosmos has only just begun.

“We’re ready to take the next step to explore those planets,” Boyd said. </s> NASA is saying “goodnight” to its pioneering Kepler telescope, which a few months shy of its 10th birthday but years past its expected lifespan, has finally run out of fuel.

The planet-hunting spacecraft, credited with discovering thousands of exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, will be retired and left in its current orbit, a safe distance from Earth, NASA announced Tuesday. Kepler’s transmitter and other instruments will be shut down in the coming days.

Kepler was launched in March 2009 with enough fuel to keep it going for at least six years, according to The Verge. It far surpassed expectations, however, collecting data in deep space for more than nine years. In all, the telescope made more than 2,600 exoplanet discoveries, NASA said.

“As NASA’s first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, said in a statement. “Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm. Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars.”

Kepler searched for alien worlds by looking out for their transits, which are dips in the brightness of stars that could indicate orbiting planets.

“It was like trying to detect a flea crawling across a car headlight when the car was 100 miles away,” William Borucki, who led the original Kepler science team, told AP of the telescope’s technology,

When Kepler’s stabilizing equipment began malfunctioning in 2013, NASA feared it was doomed. But the mission team managed to salvage the telescope after figuring out how to use the pressure of sunlight to balance the spacecraft. Once the fix was made, NASA approved a new mission for the spacecraft, dubbed K2.

Kepler continued to hunt for planets during its K2 phase. As Space.com notes, the spacecraft also studied “a variety of cosmic objects and phenomena, from comets and asteroids in our own solar system to faraway supernova explosions.”

“TESS builds on Kepler’s foundation with fresh batches of data in its search of planets orbiting some 200,000 of the brightest and nearest stars to the Earth, worlds that can later be explored for signs of life,” NASA said. </s> NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has died in orbit after a historic nine-year mission that first opened our eyes to the existence of planets beyond our solar system.

The space agency revealed the grim news in a teleconference this afternoon after the veteran craft put itself into ‘sleep mode’ earlier this month.

The aging telescope was expected to run out of fuel sometime in the near future – but, exactly when this would happen was unclear.

Now, after weeks of uncertainty, NASA confirmed Kepler has officially run out of the fuel it would need to continue science operations.

According to NASA, the now-retired spacecraft is in a 'safe orbit, away from Earth.'

Kepler, which launched back in 2009, came to be known by its team as 'the little spacecraft that could,' going above and beyond the expectations NASA had for it.

It was the first spacecraft to survey the planets in our own galaxy, and over the years its observations confirmed the existence of more than 2,600 exoplanets - many of which could be key targets in the search for alien life.

Before Kepler, we'd never found any planets outside of our solar system.

'As NASA's first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond,' said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

'Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm,' Zurbuchen said.

'Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars.'

The Kepler data indicated that there were far more planets in the sky than we'd ever imagined. According to NASA, we now know there are more planets than stars.

Kepler successfully transmitted data from its final observation campaign back to Earth at the beginning of October. All of this is now in the archive and publicly available, the Kepler team says.

During this so-called Deep Space Network time, however, when Kepler was pointed toward Earth to beam its data home, the team learned that the spacecraft had transitioned to its no-fuel-use sleep mode.

At the time, the team said it is assessing the cause and 'evaluating possible next steps.'

But following their investigation, the team concluded it was time to officially retire the craft.

During its long-running mission, however, the team says Kepler was 'stunningly successful.

Kepler showed us that 'we live in a galaxy that's teeming with planets, and we're ready to take the next step to explore those planets,' said Padi Boyd, a scientist with the upcoming TESS mission, which will serve as Kepler's successor.

'It has revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos,' NASA's astrophysics director Paul Hertz said.

'Now we know because of the Kepler Space Telescope and its science mission that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy.'

The Kepler mission ran into complications four years after it launched, when mechanical failures temporarily halted its work.

At the time, the spacecraft had already completed its primary mission objectives.

The team ultimately managed to salvage Kepler by switching its field of view roughly every three months, allowing it to move on to an extended mission dubbed K2.

The spacecraft continued to search for possible orbiting planets, looking for dips in brightness as a planet transits its star.

'It was like trying to detect a flea crawling across a car headlight when the car was 100 miles away,' said retired NASA scientist William Boruki, who led the original Kepler science team.

Kepler completed 18 missions after embarking on its K2 phase.

NASA says it ‘pushed Kepler to its full potential’ before its demise, with multiple observation campaigns and thousands of planet discoveries.

The space agency will use the data from Campaign 19 – Kepler’s final observations – to complement that collected by its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which launched this past April.

And, given the bountiful data Kepler has collected over the years, the team says there’s still much more to learn in the spacecraft’s legacy.

'We know the spacecraft's retirement isn't the end of Kepler's discoveries,' said Jessie Dotson, Kepler's project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

'I'm excited about the diverse discoveries that are yet to come from our data and how future missions will build upon Kepler's results.' </s> • NASA's Kepler space telescope, which first launched in 2009 with the goal of finding new exoplanets, is running out of fuel 94 million miles from Earth's orbit.
• The NASA spacecraft has discovered thousands of worlds around other stars in our galaxy, with some of those worlds within a habitable range, where they might have liquid water.
• But though Kepler has lasted longer than some thought it would, every mission comes to an end, and Kepler will soon be pointed back home.

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered at least 2,342 exoplanets (worlds orbiting other stars) along with another 2,245 potential other worlds. At least 30 of those planets are less than twice Earth's size and in what we think could be the habitable zone around their stars.

Yet Kepler's search for other worlds is coming to an end, 94 million miles from home.

"With nary a gas station to be found in deep space, the spacecraft is going to run out of fuel," Charlie Sobeck, system engineer for the Kepler space telescope mission, wrote in a news release for NASA. "We expect to reach that moment within several months."

Kepler was first launched in 2009 with a mission to survey our part of the Milky Way galaxy, searching for Earth-size and smaller planets that might potentially be in a habitable zone so we can see just how common these sorts of planets are.

The spacecraft itself is a telescope that observes faraway stars to look for dips in brightness, which indicate a planet has passed in front of the star. The observations can be used to calculate how large the planet is and how far from a star it is — which reveals whether or not there could be liquid water, making a world habitable.

In 2013, a broken component put an end to Kepler's primary mission. Yet researchers were able to devise another way to observe distant worlds. The same spacecraft was reborn as "K2," and in that form has discovered at least 307 confirmed exoplanets and another 479 candidates.

At the time, NASA researchers thought they'd be able to conduct 10 observation campaigns before running out of gas. Kepler surprised them and is currently in its 17th campaign.

They can't tell exactly when the craft will run out of fuel, but the end is near. NASA plans on using a last bit of energy to point Kepler back towards Earth to ensure it can gather as much data as possible.

As this mission comes to an end, a replacement will come online. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 16.

"TESS will search nearly the entire sky for planets outside our solar system, focusing on the brightest stars less than 300 light-years away, and adding to Kepler’s treasure trove of planet discoveries," wrote Sobeck. </s> NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which launched in 2009 and revolutionized our vision of the galaxy and the universe over the past decade, is now permanently retired and out of service.

The space agency first saw signs Kepler was running out of gas earlier this year and last week the telescope went into a low-fuel sleep mode. NASA said Tuesday that the spacecraft won't be waking up.

"Science operations are over," NASA astrophysics division director Paul Hertz told reporters on a conference call.

He noted that Kepler was able to confirm scientists' suspicions that space is filled with planets similar to Earth. Kepler's catalog of confirmed planets beyond our solar system includes over 2,600 worlds and dozens that could potentially support alien life. While the telescope is done collecting new data, Hertz says astronomers are still working with what's been collected over the years.

"Kepler data will continue to yield scientific discoveries for years to come."

When the spacecraft's "low fuel light" came on earlier this year, the Kepler team began to take measures to ensure that all remaining data could be recovered and downloaded before it went dark for good.

"In the end we didn't have a drop of fuel leftover for anything else," said Kepler project system engineer Charlie Sobeck.

Kepler had already been operating on borrowed time for years after one of the craft's reaction wheels, which help it point at its target stars, began to fail in 2012. Engineers came up with a way to use pressure from sunlight itself to stabilize and point Kepler, and the new adapted mission, dubbed K2, went on to discover more planets for another half decade.

"When we started conceiving this mission 35 years ago we didn't know of a single planet outside our solar system," said the Kepler mission's founding principal investigator, William Borucki, now retired, in a news release. "Now that we know planets are everywhere, Kepler has set us on a new course that's full of promise for future generations to explore our galaxy."

One of Kepler's successors is currently in space and searching for new planets. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has already spotted its first pair of Earth-like planets and will continue to catalog dozens more. The hope is that the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (a supersize, 21st century follow-up to Hubble) will be able to take a much closer look and perhaps even look for signs of life on the worlds that TESS and Kepler have pointed us toward.

NASA turns 60: The space agency has taken humanity farther than anyone else, and it has plans to go further.
NASA announces that the Kepler spacecraft has expended all its fuel and will be retired after nearly 10 years of service, having found more than 2,600 exoplanets.