NASA News: Low cost of Kepler Space Telescope threatens extraterrestrial hunting mission | Science | New



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The extraterrestrial space probe was put into hibernation mode to transmit Kepler's latest observations to the Earth.

Earlier last week, NASA's Kepler team was informed that the fuel tanks of the space telescope were very low.

Kepler's power-up will help US astronomers recover and download as much data as possible.

Once the stellar observations are collected, NASA will power the telescope to continue to observe the deep space with all that remains.

In a statement, NASA said: "To bring home data, the spacecraft must point its large antenna to the Earth and transmit the data during its assigned time Deep Space Network, which is scheduled early in the day. The spacecraft will remain stable and parked in a safe mode for the use of fuel.

"On August 2, the team will order to the spacecraft to get out of his state of use without fuel and to maneuver the spacecraft in the correct orientation.

If it succeeds, NASA will initiate the 19th observation of Kepler's space and potentially the last.

NASA expects Kepler to be completely out of fuel in the next few months.

In March 2018, NASA said: "It's like trying to decide when to refuel." Stop now or try to get to the next station?

"In our case, there is no next station, so we want to stop collecting data while we are still comfortable so that the satellite can bring it back to Earth. "

NASA news is particularly striking because of Kepler's incredible contribution to the discovery of extraterrestrial planets outside our solar system.

About 70% of the 3,750 exoplanets observed so far have was discovered by the 425 million In the early months of Kepler's mission, the telescope discovered about 7,500 stellar candidates harboring extraterrestrial worlds.

Kepler spacecraft uncovers extraterrestrial planets by scanning stars for tiny droplets in the brightness when a potential planet passes in front of them

The so-called transit method has been incredibly successful in confirming more than 2,500 exoplanets with 2,700 additional potential exoplanets on standby.

astronomer James Davenport praised Kepler's contributions to science after the news broke. 659002] He said: "For a long time we know that the spaceship is running out of gas. at Kepler's scientific conference at NASA Ames in the Bay Area last year, someone said that the Kepler spacecraft had less than two pints of fuel left

"Well now we have gone down to the vapors which is basically nothing. "Optimistically I thought we would have run out of gas at the start of the campaign 16 – that's when we did the picture & # 39; wave at Earth & # 39 ;. "

" Not only Kepler, or K2 as they call it now, get through the campaign 16, but also thanks to the campaign 17 and 51 days in the campaign 18 It's a lot more than I expected.

The Kepler space mission has been running for more than nine years and the telescope is nearly 100 million miles away from the planet.

Because the spacecraft is not even distant from the Earth, Kepler will still be trapped in space once his engines have finally cooled down.

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