NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Is In Emergency Mode

[Eugene]

Source: Forbes

APR 9, 2016 @ 10:01 AM

NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Is In Emergency Mode

Brian Koberlein
CONTRIBUTOR

NASA discovered the Kepler spacecraft entered an emergency mode yesterday, and began a high-priority effort to revive the satellite. The spacecraft’s emergency mode is the minimal mode of operation, and can be triggered when there is a serious problem with the spacecraft. It is designed to protect the spacecraft from further damage, but is also the most fuel intensive. As a result, the future of the Kepler mission is at serious risk.

Kepler was launched in 2009, with a three-year mission to discover planets around other stars. Over the next several years Kepler discovered more than 1,000 confirmed exoplanets, including 12 that are roughly Earth-massed and in their star’s habitable zone. Overall the satellite has discovered nearly 5,000 candidate exoplanets. The satellite has given us a wealth of data on planetary systems, and has been a huge leap forward in the study of exoplanets.

The Kepler mission has faced challenges before, such as when two of the gyroscopic reaction wheels failed, which prevented the satellite from maintaining a steady orientation while observing stars. This ended Kepler’s primary mission in 2013. However, the Kepler team was able to undertake a secondary mission known as K2, which used the remaining two reaction wheels and the small push of sunlight to look at different regions of the sky. Kepler was apparently in the midst of reorientation as part of the K2 mission when it entered emergency mode.

Kepler is currently 75 million miles from Earth, which means it takes 13 minutes for a radio signal to make a round trip to the satellite and back. NASA has given the recovery top priority on the Deep Space Network, which is a network of large radio antennas used to communicate with spacecraft in our solar system. At this point it is not known what triggered Kepler’s emergency mode, or whether NASA will be able to revive the spacecraft.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2016/04/09/nasas-kepler-spacecraft-is-in-emergency-mode/#712cfe512901

[longship]

1. Could be the end of mission?

There's no servicing this one (at 75 million miles distance) even if we had a rocket to get there with humans, which we don't.

So it goes.