NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Not Dead Yet, May Even Have Another Exoplanet Survey Left in It
Tom McKay
Yesterday 7:30pmFiled to: KEPLER
NASA’s $600 million Kepler space telescope, which is more or less running on thruster fuel fumes nearly a decade after its launch in 2009, woke up from a four-week hibernation phase on Thursday and is transmitting data back to Earth, Space.com reported on Friday. If all goes well, it may even be capable of continuing its mission to detect more exoplanets in distant star systems.
After waking from its hibernation, Kepler began transmitting the data it gathered from the 18th 80-day survey of its “K2" phase—an extension of its original mission launched after the craft suffered a mechanical malfunction in its steering system in 2013—via NASA’s Deep Space Network, an array of receiver dishes around the globe. If there is remaining fuel, NASA staff may try to use Kepler for a 19th observation mission.
Fuel supplies were originally only expected to last for 10 such sessions during the K2 phase, but Kepler has just kept going so far. The hibernation phase was intended to further stretch out Kepler’s tiny amount of remaining fuel and ensure it could orient itself towards Earth during its assigned Deep Space Network time slot.
During its original phase, Kepler scanned 150,000 stars, eventually discovering 2,244 candidate exoplanets and 2,327 confirmed exoplanets. The extended K2 phase of the mission, which uses a workaround involving the pressure of the sun’s rays to help stabilize Kepler following the steering system malfunction, is imperfect—but it’s still identified some 479 candidate exoplanets and confirmed 323 others.
More:
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-kepler-space-telescope-not-dead-yet-may-even-hav-1828110772
