The Kepler Space Telescope, NASA's planet fighter, is complete. What will happen to him?

For NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, the world will end in ice rather than in fire.

Kepler, which is responsible for 70% of the approximately 3,800 exoplanet discoveries confirmed to date, turned a blind eye. The prolific telescope is out of fuel and will be out of service in a week or two, NASA officials said yesterday (October 30).

Kepler will not come out in an explosion of dramatic fame such as NASA's Cassini satellite orbiting Saturn, which was deliberately disoriented in the thick atmosphere of the encircled planet in September 2017 when its fuel gauge began to scrape "E." [Kepler’s 7 Greatest Exoplanet Discoveries]

The Kepler team members are instead sending a simple command to the planet-orbiting planet-hunter, which triggers a dismantling sequence already aboard the spacecraft. Kepler will turn off its radio transmitter and built-in fault protection systems, becoming a silent, unmatched floating piece of inert metal in the dark, cold depths of space.

"Kepler is currently dropping on Earth about 94 million kilometers, and will stay at the same distance from Earth in the near future," said Charlie Sobeck, project system engineer at NASA's research center at Ames Research Center. in Moffett, California. journalists yesterday.

There will be shocks over the decades. In 2060, for example, the Earth in faster orbit will have almost caught up with Kepler, NASA officials said in a new video. The gravity of our planet will then push the space telescope toward the sun a bit, and Kepler will advance to Earth in a slightly shorter and faster orbit. But in 2117, Kepler will find his old way again after a new encounter with the Earth. And the cycle will continue.

So a rescue or refueling mission would be almost impossible, NASA officials said. Astronauts repaired and improved the Hubble Space Telescope from the agency five times between 1993 and 2009, but Hubble resides in a low Earth orbit, just 569 kilometers above our planet.

Kepler was launched in March 2009 to determine the degree of similarity of Earth-like planets around the Milky Way galaxy. The spacecraft chased extraterrestrial worlds using the "transit method", noting the low pits in starlight caused by the orbiting planets crossing their faces.

Kepler initially watched about 150,000 stars simultaneously. These original works came to an end in May 2013, when the satellite lost the second of its four steering-response wheels. However, members of the mission team soon realized that they could stabilize Kepler by using the remaining wheels and the pressure of the sunlight. In 2014, they embarked on a new mission called K2.

During K2, Kepler made various observations about 80-day staggered campaigns, studying everything from asteroids and comets in our own solar system to distant supernova explosions.

But Kepler will always be remembered for his discoveries of exoplanets. The current total of the spacecraft amounts to 2681 extraterrestrial worlds, of which 354 were discovered during the K2. Nearly 2900 "exoplanet candidates" from Kepler are still waiting to be examined by a follow-up analysis or observation, and history suggests that most of them will eventually be confirmed.

Kepler has however long been on a lot more than just these raw numbers. Space telescope observations have revealed that the planets outnumber the stars of the galaxy; potentially habitable worlds are similar to the Earth; and that planets and planetary systems are much more varied and diverse than the limited example provided by our own solar system.

Such discoveries are reshaping astronomers' understanding of the place of humanity in the universe and better equipping astrobiologists for the search for signs of our cosmic neighbors, said members of the 39, mission team.

"Basically, Kepler has paved the way for the exploration of the cosmos by humanity," said Bill Borucki, the mission's principal investigator at Kepler, who retired in 2015 after many years at NASA Ames, during a teleconference.

The total price for Kepler will be about $ 700 million, Sobeck and Borucki said.

Mike Wall's book on the quest for extraterrestrial life, "Out There," will be published on November 13 by Grand Central Publishing. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally posted on Space.com.