The artistic vision of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which managed to find more than 2,650 exoplanets. He has awakened again and sets about another round of observations.
NASA's Kepler Low-Fuel Space Telescope, which managed to find more than 2,650 alien worlds, woke up from one more dream and began scientific observations. This was announced on September 5, 2018.
The Kepler mission, whose value covers $ 600 million, was launched in March 2009 to find Earth-like planets in the galaxy. Initially, the ship was studying more than 150,000 stars at the same time, fixing the weak differences in brightness caused by the passage of orbital planets in front of the stars.
This work was completed in May 2013 due to a malfunction that violated Kepler’s orientation. But members of the mission were able to stabilize the apparatus using the pressure of sunlight. In 2014, the mission continued in the updated version of K2. They have already used 80-day campaigns for research. In early July 2018, operators switched Kepler to sleep to save enough fuel to redirect to Earth in August and transfer data from the 18th Campaign to earth control points. Kepler successfully coped with the task and fell asleep again on August 24th.
Now we can re-greet his awakening and the transition to the 19th mission, which began on 29 August. However, his future still seems vague. After hibernation, the configuration of the spacecraft changed due to the unusual behavior of one of the engines. A preliminary analysis indicates that the telescope’s exponential characteristics may deteriorate slightly. The exact amount of fuel remaining is still unclear, so NASA is monitoring the functionality of Kepler.
