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We still do not know if there is life on other worlds, although this is likely, but NASA's Kepler satellite helped spot the abundance of planets orbiting other stars from May 2009. Until now, I've used it to confirm the existence of 2,650 exoplanets in an area of more than 150,000 stars that & # 39; He studies.
But this long service is about to end, as NASA said today that the craft is running out of fuel. The space agency has put the satellite into a form of hibernation until August 2, when the Deep Space Network – a global network of receivers for space missions – was tasked with downloading the data from its 18th observation mission. Following this download, NASA will use the remaining fuel to start a 19th session.
Fortunately, his successor is already in place and operational. The Exoplanets in Transit (TESS) survey satellite was launched in April 2018 and produced a test image in May. TESS is a massive improvement, observing nearly 400 times the region of space as Kepler, about 85% of what is observable since its orbit relative to the Earth.
Kepler is already a survivor, continuing to function after part of the failed gyro mechanism that lets him target the star fields. Four wheels turn in the gyroscope to provide a reaction that necessarily allows for accurate tracking, and two of the four failed in May 2013. Scientists at NASA's mission found a clever solution, in which they used the pressure of the Sun . The mission took over under the nickname K2 in May 2014.
Researchers expect to find more discoveries of exoplanets from Kepler data, as it may take years to analyze the information from the spacecraft instruments. An academic article published on June 29 added 44 validated planets to the mission's total using data from the 10th K2 phase observation campaign conducted in 2016.
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