NASA retires Kepler

[Jodell88]

The prolific Kepler space telescope has had to give up its prime planet-hunting mission after engineers failed to find a fix for its hobbled pointing system.

The observatory lost the second of its four reaction wheels in May, meaning it can no longer hold completely steady as it looks towards the stars.

Nasa engineers have worked through a number of possible solutions but have failed to find one that will work.

Kepler has so far confirmed 135 planets beyond our Solar System.

But it still has more than 3,500 "candidates" in its database that have yet to be fully investigated, and the vast majority of these are expected to be confirmed as planets in due course.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23724344

 

[AstroManLuca]

Sad that they couldn't get it pointing straight, but it was a very cool mission. Amazing to think that just 20 years ago, we didn't know of ANY planets outside of our solar system.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

My fiance named our doggeh Kepler after her. *Sigh*.

NEEEERDS!!!

 

[silverpig]

One of my friends is a scientist on that mission. They still have years of work ahead of them because of all the data they have already collected.

It sucks that the telescope broke, but it's not a total loss.

 

[lupi]

They question is how long till something can replace it. The answer probably isn't a good one.

 

[who?]

Oh, NASA not nVidia.

 

[JTsyo]

One of my friends is a scientist on that mission. They still have years of work ahead of them because of all the data they have already collected.

It sucks that the telescope broke, but it's not a total loss.

Yea, I heard they are now looking into what missions it can still tackle.

 

[PottedMeat]

The reaction wheels installed were deemed too unreliable for 2 other spacecraft. They took out the barely used wheels before launch to the manufacturer who found signs of pitting in the bearings. That sounds pretty bad.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-wheels-come-off-kepler-1.13032

But the team wanted to take one last look. In early 2008, Troeltzsch and his colleagues took all four wheels out of the spacecraft and sent them back to the manufacturer, Ithaco Space Systems in Ithaca, New York, for re-inspection. Changes were made, including replacing the ball bearings, which had already shown signs of pitting, says Charles Sobeck, Kepler’s deputy project manager at Ames.