Artistic vision of NASA's Kepler exoplanet space telescope
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which discovered more than 2,650 foreign worlds, came out of another hibernation on October 11. For a while the telescope operated at a low fuel supply. Thus, the team “lulled” the device several times, trying to provide enough fuel to orient Kepler to Earth and send the latest data home.
Such relays are possible only at certain times. The team relies on NASA's Deep Space Network to catch incoming information and share this satellite dish system with other agency missions.
The Kepler mission cost $ 600 million and was launched in March 2009. Initially, the ship looked at more than 150,000 stars at the same time, looking for tiny dips of brightness, indicating the passage of orbital planets. In May 2013, the second of the four wheels that control the orientations of the telescope failed, which resulted in the completion of the initial mission. But the technicians found a way to stabilize the telescope and discovered the expanded mission of K2. During this period, Kepler hunted and watched many other objects and phenomena during the 80-day campaigns. The last Campaign 19 began on 29 August. But less than a month later, the telescope had to be hibernated.
Unfortunately, refueling Kepler will fail. The observatory, which accounts for about 70% of all discoveries of foreign worlds, now revolves around the sun and is millions of miles away from Earth.
