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NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system and has revealed that our galaxy contains more planets than stars. Credit: NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech
On the evening of Thursday, November 15, the NASA Kepler Space Telescope received its latest orders to disconnect communications with the Earth. The "good evening" orders end the transition from space shuttle to retirement, which began Oct. 30 with NASA's announcement that Kepler was running out of fuel and could no longer conduct scientific research.
Coincidentally, Kepler's "good night" falls on the same date as the 388-year anniversary of the death of his namesake, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion and died November 15, 1630.
The latest orders were sent via NASA's Deep Space Network from Kepler's Operations Center to the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP, of the University of Colorado at Boulder. LASP manages satellite operations on behalf of NASA and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado.
Kepler's team disabled security modes that inadvertently reset systems and shut down communications by shutting down transmitters. As the spacecraft slowly rotates, the Kepler team had to carefully time the controls for the instructions to reach the spacecraft during viable communication periods. The team will monitor the spacecraft to ensure that the controls have worked well. The probe is now drifting in a safe orbit around the Sun, 94 million kilometers from the Earth.
The data collected by Kepler for more than nine years of operation will be used for exciting discoveries for years to come.
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