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Kepler became NASA's third space telescope in as many weeks to encounter major problems.
Chandra and Hubble both worked poorly earlier this month, going into 'sleep mode'.
NASA revealed that Chandra had been the same.
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NASA's Kepler Space Telescope still has life. The exoplanet hunter is now awake after a four week hibernation and data transmission to the Earth. Artist's View
Following the successful return of data from the last observation campaign, the Kepler team ordered the spacecraft to get in a position to start collecting data for its next campaign.
However, Friday, "during regular contact between a spacecraft using NASA's Deep Space network, the team learned that the spacecraft had gone into standby mode without using fuel" .
The Kepler team is currently evaluating the cause and "evaluation of possible next steps".
The aging exoplanet hunter is known to have dangerous fuel consumption and is approaching the end of his useful life.
WHAT IS TELESCOPE KEPLER?
Since 2014, the Kepler mission has spotted thousands of exoplanets, including 30 planets half as large as the Earth, but now circulating in the habitable areas of their stars.
Launched at Cape Canaveral on March 7, 2009, the Kepler The Telescope contributed to the search for planets located outside the solar system.
At launch, it weighed 1,320 pounds (1,052 kg) and was 15.4 feet long by 8.9 feet wide (4.7 meters by 2.7 meters).
satellite generally searches for "Earth-like" planets, which means that they are rocky and orbiting in the orbit of the habitable zone or "Gold Loop" of the Earth. ;a star.
In total, Kepler found about 5,000 unconfirmed "candidate" exoplanets, with 2,500 "confirmed" exoplanets that scientists have since proven to be real.
Kepler is currently on mission 'K2' to discover more exoplanets.
K2 is the second mission of the spaceship. It was implemented by necessity rather than desire, two failed vehicle reaction wheels.
These wheels control the direction and altitude of the spacecraft and help direct it in the right direction
The modified mission examines exoplanets around pale red dwarf stars.
While the planet discovered thousands of exoplanets during its eight-year mission, five in particular remained stuck.
Kepler-452b, nicknamed "Earth 2.0", shares many features with our planet despite 1,400 light-years away. It was discovered by NASA's Kepler telescope in 2014
1) & # 39; Earth 2.0 & # 39;
In 2014, the telescope made one of its greatest discoveries when it spotted the exoplanet Kepler-452b, dubbed "Earth 2.0". . .
The object shares many features with our planet although it is 1,400 light-years away from its surface.
It is similar in size to the Earth, receives about the same amount of sunlight, and has the same length of year.
Experts. We still do not know if the planet is harboring life, but if the plants were transferred there, they would probably survive.
2) The first planet found in orbit around two stars
Kepler found a planet that orbits two stars, known as the binary star system, in 2011. [19659002] The system, known as Kepler-16b, is about 200 light-years away from Earth.
The experts compared this system to the famous "double sunset" pictured on the original planet of Luke Skywalker, Tatooine, in "Star Wars: A New Hope."
3) Finding the first habitable planet outside the solar system
Scientists discovered Kepler-22b in 2011, the first habitable planet discovered by astronomers outside the solar system.
The habitable super-Earth seems to be a large rocky planet with a surface temperature of about 72 ° C. ° F (22 ° C), similar to a spring day on Earth.
4) Discovering a "super-Earth"
The telescope found its first "super-Earth" in April 2017, a huge planet called LHS 1140b
It orbits a red dwarf star at about 40 million. light-years away, and scientists believe that it encloses me oceans of giant magma.
5) Find the star "Trappist-1" System
The Trappist-1 star system, which hosts a record number of seven Earth-like planets, was one of the greatest discoveries of 20's.
Each of the planets, which revolve around a dwarf star barely 39 million light years away, is likely to contain water on its surface.
Three of the planets have such good conditions that scientists say that life may have already evolved.
Kepler spotted the system in 2016, but scientists have revealed this discovery in a series of documents released in February of this year.
Kepler is a telescope with an extremely sensitive instrument called a photometer. which detects the slightest changes in the light emitted by the stars
How does Kepler discover the planets?
The telescope has an incredibly sensitive instrument known as a photometer that detects the slightest changes in the light emitted by stars.
He tracks 100,000 stars simultaneously, looking for revealing light intensity drops from a planet in orbit pbading between the satellite and its distant target.
the planet pbades in front of a star seen from Earth, the event called a "transit".
Tiny troughs in the brightness of a star during a transit can help scientists determine the orbit and size of the planet, as well as the size of the star .
Based on these calculations, scientists can determine if the planet is in the "habitable zone" of the star, and therefore whether it could accommodate the conditions for extraterrestrial life to develop.
Kepler has completed 18 missions since the beginning of his K2 phase, or an extension of his initial mission to collect information on many distant planets.
NASA claims that it has made "great strides" to resurrect Hubble's space. The telescope after a malfunction caused its shutdown.
The telescope activated a backup gyroscope after entering safe mode due to a failed gyroscope on Friday, October 5.
However, the gyroscope began to spin at an alarming speed. NASA has therefore not been able to change the scope of application. go back on.
The Hubble telescope (shown) was launched in 1990 and NASA hopes it will remain operational until the 2020s. It studies near and visible light ultraviolet light and there is no clear successor to replace it. It malfunctioned and went into standby mode earlier this week
HOW DOES HUBBLE GRYOSCOPES WORK?
A wheel inside the gyroscope rotates at a constant speed of 19,200 revolutions per minute.
This wheel is mounted in a sealed cylinder, called a float, which is suspended in a thick fluid.
The electricity is routed to the motor by thin wires, the size of a human hair, which are immersed in the fluid.
The electronic components in the gyro detect very small movements of the wheel axis and transmit this information to Hubble's mainframe computer.
These gyroscopes have two modes – up and down.
High mode is a coarse mode used to measure high rotational speeds when the spacecraft rotates in the sky from one target to the other.
Low mode is a precision mode used to measure finer rotations when the probe is locked to a target and must remain very still.
To solve this problem, NASA has opted for a proven IT support technique: turn it on and off.
The Hubble Operations team turns off the gyroscope for one second and then restarts it before the wheel turns.
They then commanded a series of maneuvers or turns in opposite directions to try to eliminate any blockage that could deconcentrate the float and produce extremely high speeds.
During each maneuver, the gyroscope was switched from high mode to low mode to dislodge any blockage that may have accumulated around the float.
Following the maneuvers of October 18, the team found a significant reduction in high rates, allowing flows to be measured in low mode for brief periods
"Rotational speeds produced by the emergency gyroscope have since been reduced and are now within the expected limits, "said NASA.
Additional testing will be done to ensure Hubble can return to scientific operations with this gyroscope.
These are the most powerful telescopes on the Earth that are beginning to show the tension of decades of use and may soon stop functioning completely.
Astronomical observatories such as Hubble and Chandra were launched. Orbiting for several years and has been providing us with amazing images and valuable data ever since.
These wonderful machines, which have been invaluable for the advancement of modern science, are deteriorating with age and NASA have no plan in place to replace troubled technology.
They were developed to help map distant galaxies, look into black holes, and locate new planets, but astronomers fear that their eyes in the sky will darken soon.
"The lack of willingness to invest in large-scale scientific research began to worry us," said the Washington Post astrophysicist Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for research in astronomy, which operates the Hubble telescope on behalf of NASA. As a community, we face a very daunting prospect. Some fields will simply not have a telescope. And science can not be realized otherwise. "
WHAT IS THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE?
The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990 via the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It owes its named after the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble, born in Missouri in 1889.
He is probably the most famous to have discovered that the universe was growing and how fast, what is called the Hubble constant. 19659002] Hubble has made more than 1.3 million observations since the beginning of its mission in 1990 and has contributed to the publication of more than 15,000 scientific articles.
The Teles Hubble's cope is named after Edwin Hubble, who was responsible for creating the Hubble Constant, is one of the greatest astronomers of all time
He revolves around the Earth at a speed from about 17,000 km / h in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles altitude.
Hubble The pointing accuracy is 0.007 seconds arc, which is equivalent to being able to direct a laser beam focused on Franklin D. Roosevelt's head for a distance of about 200 miles.
Hubble's main mirror is 2.4 meters (7 feet). 10.5 inches wide and 13.5 meters long, the length of a big school bus.
Funding for the successors of these branded telescopes has not yet been secured and Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said it's a "choice for the nation".
"Our missions will be influenced by the priorities of the community as well as the funding choices made by the political system," he added.
Hubble was launched in 1990 and earlier this month, it malfunctioned, shutting down and being destined for scientists totally dependent on the 28-year-old machine, how much they relied on technology originally designed in the 1970s.
The Chandra X-ray telescope, which has been around for 20 years, has exceeded its expected life span of nearly 15 years.
Chandra automatically went into safe mode earlier this month because of a gyroscope problem.
"The cause of Chandra's safe mode on October 10 has now been understood and the operations team has managed to bring the probe back to its normal scoring mode," NASA said.
According to the newspaper, safe mode was caused by a problem. One of Chandra's gyroscopes generated a three-second period of erroneous data, which led the on-board computer to calculate an incorrect value for the spacecraft's momentum.
The erroneous moment indication then triggered the safe mode.
"The team has completed its project of permuting gyroscopes and setting aside the gyroscope that has suffered this problem," Nasa said.
Hubble was put into hibernation because of a similar failure of a gyroscope.
NASA claims that the problems with Chandra have now been solved, but there is little fuel left and we do not know how long it will stay functional.
The Space Agency says it's a coincidence that Chandra and Hubble are gone & # 39; asleep in the week from each other.
"is continuing its work for the resumption of the Hubble Space Telescope's scientific operations after the spacecraft has pbaded into safe mode due to a failed gyro (gyro)."
An astronomer working on Chandra, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian The Center for Astrophysics, tweeted Friday, said: "Chandra decided that if Hubble could take a little vacation, he wanted it too. & # 39;
The American political giant provides NASA with important resources and financial support to launch and maintain the Great Observatory program in the 1970s.
The Chandra X-ray telescope (pictured) is in its twentieth year of operation and has exceeded its expected operational life of nearly 15 years
. Four telescopes were designed and constructed that would measure the entire gamma ray spectrum (Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) to infrared radiation (the Spitzer Space Telescope).
The other two telescopes in this program – Hubble and Chandra – badyze visible / near ultraviolet light and X-rays, respectively.
Between them, they would discover and help unravel the mysteries of the most energetic explosions of the universe, black holes, exoplanets, newborn stars and discovering the age of the # 39; universe.
Compton perished in 2001 after a gyro number made it useless and Spitzer was expected to die next year.
NASA expects the remaining two telescopes to continue operating until the end of the 2020s.
"People suddenly realized that Hubble would not live forever," he said. Tom Brown, Hubble Mission Leader, Space Telescope Science Institute.
In the event of Hubble's failure, there will be no more visible or ultraviolet telescopes on this scale.
According to Dr. Brown, this makes scientists wonder what will happen next.
The James Webb telescope will study infrared radiation in space, but delays and errors have caused delays and errors. The launch was postponed to 2021.
As for the spectrum of visible light, NASA does not plan to replace Chandra and further study the wavelength of X-ray light.
Julie McInery, a gamma ray astrophysicist, project scientist at Fermi, successor to Compton, said: "You must have a minimum level of activity in a given telescope area to retain your expertise within the community. and be able to continue building. . Instruments & # 39;
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