Kepler – Spaceflight Now

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.

NASA’s Kepler telescope nears end of mission

July 10, 2018 Stephen Clark

Nearly a decade after launching from Cape Canaveral on a planet-hunting quest that has netted 2,650 new confirmed worlds beyond our solar system, NASA’s Kepler telescope has paused its observations after on-board sensors detected it is running low on 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.

OTD…March 6 and Kepler

March 6, 2016 Justin Ray

NASA’s Kepler planet-finder began its mission to discover Earth-like worlds orbiting other stars in the galaxy today in 2009, successfully launching aboard a Delta 2 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Kepler telescope spots Earth-like ‘cousin’

July 23, 2015 William Harwood

Analysis of data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has revealed a near Earth-size world orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star, scientists announced Thursday, the closest match yet in the ongoing hunt for planets similar in size to Earth where life, as humans understand it, might have a chance to evolve.

Kepler’s data catalog exceeds 1,000 confirmed planets

January 8, 2015 Stephen Clark

Astronomers culling imagery from NASA’s Kepler space telescope have found eight new worlds around other stars, raising the number of verified discoveries made by Kepler to more than 1,000 planets.