Two major NASA space missions ended this week, but do not panic

It's easy for a superstitious mind to draw anxious conclusions this week after NASA announced the end of two long-term missions: the Kepler Space Telescope looking for an exoplanet and the Dawn mission that visited asteroid.

And these high-profile finals take place in the midst of a multitude of other space-related issues: the Mars Rover Opportunity remains silent nearly five months after a dust storm that swamped the planet, and the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray observatory was briefly offline in October.

But as NASA staff pointed out at a press conference Tuesday (Oct. 30) to announce the end of Kepler's mission, the sudden surge of bad news is not a reason to panic. "We are still trying to make the most of scientific data from our spacecraft," said Paul Hertz, head of astrophysics at NASA at the Science Mission Directorate, during the press conference, adding that Agency already had more than 60 science ships at work now. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

"If you only choose those who reach the end of their lives, you can tell a story, but if you look at the entire space ship portfolio, I do not think we have a problem at all, I think we are in a golden age of science NASA, "said Hertz.

The Kepler telescope, which has identified more than 2,600 extraterrestrial planets, and the Dawn spacecraft, which visited the Vesta asteroid and the dwarf planet Ceres, have come to an end as they no longer have enough gas in the tank . Engineers at both missions knew that their ends were looming as they could calculate the remaining fuel estimates.

Both machines used chemical fuel to turn back to Earth and transmit their discoveries to the house. without this fuel, there was no way to learn from our distant emissaries. Of course, each mission could theoretically have been supplied with more fuel, but not without making its price tags bigger. And both missions lasted much longer than originally planned, overcoming serious mechanical problems along the way.

When the Kepler Mission Started in April 2009, it was originally designed to last three years. It lasted until 2013, when two broken reaction wheels forced the end of its mission. The telescope engineers have not yet abandoned it; instead, they reprogrammed it, so instead of looking for exoplanets in a corner of the sky, they jumped from region to region. Reincarnated, the telescope completed four more years of observations.

Dawn also survived reaction wheel failures that threatened to marginalize the probe at the end of its stay at the Vesta asteroid. In the case of Dawn, the engineers saved him by using fuel to make small adjustments to his position. This spacecraft also exceeded its original schedule, spending 14 months at Vesta instead of the expected seven years and more than three years at the dwarf Ceres instead of the planned five months.

Although the fate of Opportunity rover remains unknown, as NASA continues to try to revive it until January, the rover has exceeded its targets as dramatically as its space cohorts. Originally, his mission was to last 90 Martian days, about 40 minutes longer than a land day. Instead, the rover has thrown away the red planet for more than 14 years. [10 Years on Mars: Smithsonian Celebrates Spirit, Opportunity Rovers (Photos)]

(The planetary companion of opportunity, the Curiosity mobile, also encountered a small problem in his work when a bug neutralized his active computer offline.The engineers managed to get the robot to pass his second identical "brain".

With regard to the latest candidates for a fallen ground spacecraft this fall, the problems of the Hubble Space Telescope and the X-ray Chandra Observatory have never been considered lethal wounds. In both cases, the engineers knew that the scientific instruments were intact and that the problems were probably caused by telescope gyroscopes, which control the way the instruments point in space.

Beyond the list of victims, NASA also has beginnings to remember. Its satellite transits of satellite exploration, or TESS, has taken over where Kepler has stopped, starting observations at the end of July, and has already identified several possible planets. The Parker Solar Probe "Touch the Sun" mission was launched in August and is close to our star this week.

NASA's new Mars lander, called InSight, will land just after Thanksgiving, ready to study inside the Red Planet. The New Horizons probe will ring this year by swinging a distant object from the Kuiper Belt.

So fasten your seatbelt – this hike is not over.

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