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Of course, his mission is far from over.
As planned a few months ago, the Kepler Space Observatory would soon run out of fuel. And that minute has arrived
Therefore, NASA has announced that Kepler will be suspended and will not pursue his investigative work for space. Strictly speaking, the device will go into hibernation mode until August 2, the date when the data download from the observation campaign number 18, by the NASA team on Earth, is planned.
And after? This is not the end of Kepler, much less. On August 6 a new campaign is expected to begin on the 19th. Even with the fuel drop detected this week, NASA does not anticipate that the observatory's work will end and on its official website they warned that they will continue the mission until finally, Kepler can no longer function.
When this happens, the mission will be described as more than fully successful since the space observatory has exceeded all expectations. Originally, the main mission would end in 2012 and would continue with the extension until 2016. These estimates have been exceeded for a long time, with more than 1000 exoplanets discovered in the trip (and some incidents between them). two), including one similar to Tatooine
Long live Kepler.
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