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The Kepler mission officially ended on Oct. 30, when NASA announced that the spacecraft was out of fuel and would receive its latest orders this week or next, but its legacy will extend well beyond planets that he has detected.
This is thanks to two innovative aspects of the mission, explained the MIT astronomer Sara Seager at Space.com – the way she broke our expectations about the appearance of other solar systems and setting up a scientific infrastructure to identify the planets.
"Kepler was just a game changer, he was so pioneering for exoplanets," Seager said. "Before the launch of Kepler, we only knew hundreds of exoplanets and Kepler found thousands of them, and he found all kinds of crazy planets." [7 Greatest Alien Planet Discoveries by NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft]
Artistic representation of the very ancient Kepler Space Telescope, and some of the planets discovered during its decade in space. Credit: NASA
These include many planets that are not equivalent here in our usual solar system – planets that orbit their star in less than a terrestrial day, planets that can be so hot that their surface is from liquid lava, solar systems with half a dozen planets piled the equivalent of the space between our sun and the orbit of Mercury.
"He found so many crazy things we absolutely did not expect," said Seager. This is also statistically true, she added. For example, Kepler's discoveries are ten times more frequent than planets such as Jupiter. "We do not even know what these planets are made of, we do not have the equivalent of the solar system," Seager said.
Seager is the deputy scientific director of Kepler's successor, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TSS), which was launched in April and began scientific observations in July. Unlike Kepler's early days, scientists know exactly what to do with the data that TESS sends home every two weeks – even graduate students can put in place the data processing procedures they need to confidently identify candidates to the planet, said Seager.
"Finding planets with the transit method has become fairly standard," she said. "TESS did not have to solve these big problems." Kepler's step towards TESS is paying off: scientists have already announced two possible planets they have spotted in the TESS data.
But the next steps may not go as easily as the Kepler-TESS transition of missions dedicated to exoplanets, Seager worries. The crucial James Webb space telescope, which will allow astronomers to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, has fallen behind schedule, with its launch scheduled for 2021, the year after the end of the TESS main mission.
The budget and timing issues of this project could hinder the next project on the list of scientists, the wide-field infrared surveyor telescope (WFIRST). WFIRST should conduct a technological demonstration of a coronograph, which will allow astronomers to erase stars and study the discs that surround them. [7 Ways to Find Alien Planets]
The WFIRST coronograph instrument has been downgraded to demonstrate technology to reduce costs. "It's not going to revolutionize science, but it will show that it works," said Seager. This will advocate the realization of a full service coronograph during a future mission.
But for Seager, Webb's cost overruns should teach astronomers a valuable lesson for mission planning. Trying to design a project that integrates everyone's priorities is the recipe for a mission that escapes control.
"We have made all things easy, cheaper, now we want to do things harder, but if you want to do a lot of difficult things and put them together, you're just going to get in trouble," said Seager. "This shared thing is now so complicated, so gigantic and way too crazy."
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
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