Ames Research Center – Page 2

NASA says goodbye to Kepler planet-hunter

November 18, 2018 Stephen Clark

Ground controllers have beamed the final commands to NASA’s Kepler telescope, turning off the spacecraft’s transmitters and disabling the craft’s automatic recovery software after the planet-hunting observatory ran out of fuel last month.

NASA’s trailblazing Kepler telescope ends planet hunt

October 30, 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Kepler telescope has run out of fuel and ended science operations, closing out a pioneering decade-long mission that showed planets are commonplace across our galaxy, agency officials said Tuesday.

Dwindling fuel levels and a balky thruster can’t keep Kepler down

September 7, 2018 Stephen Clark

After downloading science data and bypassing a balky thruster, NASA’s Kepler mission has resumed its search for planets around other stars after a two-month pause in observations, but engineers expect the spacecraft to soon run out of fuel.

Kepler adds 1,284 exoplanets to its total

May 10, 2016 William Harwood

A statistical analysis of data collected by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope during its initial mission shows a better than 99 percent chance that 1,284 worlds previously classified as “candidates” are, in fact, actual planets, researchers said Tuesday.

Kepler telescope recovered from spacecraft emergency

April 11, 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is stable and out of emergency mode, officials said Monday, and the observatory is downlinking data to help engineers determine what caused it to suspend science operations last week.

Kepler space telescope in emergency mode

April 9, 2016 Stephen Clark

Mission controllers are trying to diagnose a problem that put NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting observatory in emergency mode nearly 75 million miles from Earth this week.

Airborne researchers catch up with falling space debris

November 16, 2015 Stephen Clark

Stationed aboard a Gulfstream business jet over the Indian Ocean, an international team of scientists observed a mysterious fragment of space junk falling through Earth’s atmosphere Friday years after it was discarded on a deep space mission.

Roving chunk of space junk plunging back to Earth

November 12, 2015 Stephen Clark

A long-lost fragment of space debris is falling toward Earth for a searing re-entry over the Indian Ocean on Friday, but the widely-watched event poses no risk to people.

Hawaii’s first satellite launch set for Tuesday

November 3, 2015 Stephen Clark

U.S. military authorities have granted approval for liftoff Tuesday of a simplified satellite launcher from Hawaii on a test flight officials say will help drive down the costs of sending small spacecraft into orbit.