nasa, kepler, kepler space telescope, exoplanets, kepler mission

NASA's long-suffering Kepler Space Telescope has returned to standby mode just days after the start of its latest observational campaign, the agency said in a statement released yesterday (23 October) .

"Following the successful return of data from the last observation campaign, the Kepler team has put the spacecraft in a position to start collecting data for its next campaign," reads the statement. NASA. "On Friday, October 19, during a regular contact with a satellite using NASA's Deep Space Network, the team learned that the satellite had switched to standby mode without using fuel."

Engineers working on Kepler worry about fuel supplies from the spacecraft since this spring. In recent months, the telescope has only conducted partial observation campaigns, then has fallen asleep to ensure that it has enough time to send the data to the Earth.

But sleep patterns can not solve the underlying problem that Kepler is running out of fuel. (Earlier this month, NASA announced a second mission challenge, namely that the telescope was struggling to navigate with precision.)

Despite recent challenges and the imminent end of the mission, Kepler is a resounding success and is now a NASA flagship project. When the spacecraft was launched for the first time in 2009, its mission was designed to last only one year. Instead, its mission continued until 2013, when mechanical problems forced engineers to reschedule its mission in a new campaign called K2.

Between the two missions, the spacecraft has identified more than 2650 confirmed planets in orbit around stars, proving that these exoplanets are far more common than anything scientists could have imagined.

While Kepler will leave large shoes to fill, a new telescope has already begun to perform its task, in search of extraterrestrial planets. This mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey, or TESS, was launched in April and has already identified two candidate planets – out of an estimated 10,000 according to scientists, in the first two years.

Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.