Premier Hubble, now Kepler – Why are NASA's telescopes failing?

NASA has not had much luck with its flagship space telescopes, worth millions of dollars.

In recent months, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Kepler Space Probe have all experienced technical problems that have led to the suspension of scientific activities.

At present, the space agency announced that Kepler had returned to standby mode, in which she was not consuming fuel, just days after the start of her latest series of sightings.

"After the successful return of data from the last observation campaign, the Kepler team has put the spaceship in a position to start collecting data for its next campaign," reads in a statement from the 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."

The spacecraft has been dangerously short of fuel for some time and has entered sleep mode several times to conserve enough energy to be able to return valuable data to Earth as long as it remains viable.

It is possible that Kepler is finally running out of fuel and will not turn back on, although for the moment the situation is not clear.

"The Kepler team is evaluating the cause and possible next steps," the statement said.

Fuel issues are not the only problem Kepler has recently faced: in September, NASA announced that the aging telescope's ability to locate precisely had deteriorated.

Nevertheless, the spacecraft successfully uploaded data from its 19th Earth Observation campaign on October 15th. It is hoped that there will remain enough power to restore the remaining data collected during the latest series of observations.

Although this is the end of the planet's fighter jet, Kepler will go down in history as one of NASA's greatest achievements. Launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets the size of the Earth, it was only designed for a period of one year. However, the mission lasted much longer, uncovering nearly 3,000 exoplanets, revolutionizing our understanding of worlds beyond the solar system.

An illustration of the Kepler Space Telescope. NASA

For example, based on data collected by the Kepler mission, scientists estimated that there could be up to 40 billion rocky exoplanets the size of an earth in the living areas of sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way alone.

Hubble and Chandra, launched in 1990 and 1999, have recently experienced technical problems.

On October 5, Hubble suspended its scientific operations and entered safe mode because of a gyro (gyroscope), a device to point and stabilize the telescope of the observatory. Safe mode places the telescope in a stable configuration until ground control can correct the problem.

Hubble is equipped with six gyroscopes, but generally uses only three at a time, the others acting as backups. The failing gyroscope was one of those backups.

NASA announced on Monday that it was about to repair the flaw and that it would conduct tests to make sure Hubble could return to scientific operations with this gyroscope.

Chandra, the most powerful X-ray telescope, also had problems with one of its gyroscopes: a problem caused the switch to safe mode of the observatory on October 10. 21st of October.