The Kepler spacecraft is in trouble again. (credit: NASA)
Something's gone wrong aboard the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. On Friday evening, mission manager Charlie Sobeck announced that Kepler had entered "emergency mode." This is the lowest functioning operation mode and, critically, consumes the most fuel.
The last time NASA contacted Kepler, on April 4th, the spacecraft was in good health. On Thursday, however, Kepler was found to have been in emergency mode for about a day and a half. Even though it takes roughly 13 minutes for messages to travel the 120 million km from Earth to the spacecraft, it is a positive sign that NASA can still communicate with Kepler. This leaves open the possibility of some technical repair.
Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has been a major success for NASA, finding about 5,000 candidate planets, with 1,000 of those already confirmed by ground-based observations. Moreover, it has firmly established the commonality of planets, from Earth-sized worlds to gas giants, throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.
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