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A28 SCIENCE
Thursday 1 November 2018
Kepler telescope dead after finding thousands of worlds

By MARCIA DUNN NASA’s 11-year-old Dawn
AP Aerospace Writer spacecraft is pretty much
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. out of fuel after orbiting the
(AP) — NASA’s elite plan- asteroid Vesta as well as
et-hunting spacecraft has the dwarf planet Ceres. It
been declared dead, just remains in orbit around Ce-
a few months shy of its 10th res, which, like Vesta, is in
anniversary. the asteroid belt between
Officials announced the Mars and Jupiter.
Kepler Space Telescope’s Two of NASA’s older tele-
demise Tuesday. scopes have been hit with
Already well past its expect- equipment trouble recent-
ed lifetime, the 9 1/2-year- ly, but have recovered.
old Kepler had been run- The 28-year-old Hubble
ning low on fuel for months. Space Telescope resumed
Its ability to point at distant science observations last
stars and identify possible weekend, following a
alien worlds worsened This illustration made available by NASA shows the Kepler Space Telescope. As of October 2018, three-week shutdown. The
dramatically at the begin- the planet-hunting spacecraft has been in space for nearly a decade. 19-year-old Chandra X-ray
ning of October, but flight Associated Press Telescope’s pointing sys-
controllers still managed “It has revolutionized our away and, according to sights on stars closer to tem also ran into trouble
to retrieve its latest obser- understanding of our place NASA, showed that statisti- home. It’s already identi- briefly in October. Both
vations. The telescope has in the cosmos,” Hertz said. cally there’s at least one fied some possible planets. cases involved critical gy-
now gone silent, its fuel “Now we know because planet around every star in Tess project scientist Padi roscopes, needed to point
tank empty. of the Kepler Space Tele- our Milky Way Galaxy. Boyd called Kepler’s mis- the telescopes.
“Kepler opened the gate scope and its science mis- Borucki, who dreamed up sion “stunningly successful.” Hertz said all the space-
for mankind’s exploration sion that planets are more the mission decades ago, Kepler showed us that “we craft problems were “com-
of the cosmos,” said re- common than stars in our said one of his favorite dis- live in a galaxy that’s teem- pletely independent” and
tired NASA scientist William galaxy.” coveries was Kepler 22b, a ing with planets, and we’re coincidental in timing.
Borucki, who led the origi- Almost lost in 2013 because water planet bigger than ready to take the next step Now 94 million miles from
nal Kepler science team. of equipment failure, Ke- Earth but where it is not too to explore those planets,” Earth, Kepler should re-
Kepler discovered 2,681 pler was salvaged by en- warm and not too cold — she said. main in a safe, stable or-
planets outside our solar gineers and kept peering the type “that could lead Another longtime space- bit around the sun. Flight
system and even more into the cosmos, thick with to life.” craft chasing strange controllers will disable the
potential candidates. It stars and galaxies, ever on A successor to Kepler worlds in our own solar spacecraft’s transmit-
showed us rocky worlds the the lookout for dips in in launched in April, NASA’s system, meanwhile, is also ters, before bidding a final
size of Earth that, like Earth, the brightness of stars that Tess spacecraft, has its close to death. “good night.”q
might harbor life. It also could indicate an orbiting
unveiled incredible super planet.
Earths: planets bigger than “It was like trying to detect NASA spacecraft sets record
Earth but smaller than Nep- a flea crawling across a
tune. car headlight when the car for closest approach to sun
NASA’s astrophysics direc- was 100 miles away,” said
tor Paul Hertz estimated Borucki said.
that anywhere from two The resurrected mission
to a dozen of the planets became known as K2 and By MARCIA DUNN
discovered by Kepler are yielded 350 confirmed exo- AP Aerospace Writer
rocky and Earth-sized in the planets, or planets orbiting CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
so-called Goldilocks zone. other stars, on top of what (AP) — NASA’s Parker Solar
But Kepler’s overall planet the telescope had already Probe is now closer to the
census showed that 20 to uncovered since its March sun than any spacecraft
50 percent of the stars vis- 7, 2009, launch from Cape has ever gotten.
ible in the night sky could Canaveral. Parker on Monday sur-
have planets like ours in the In all, close to 4,000 exo- passed the record of 26.6
habitable zone for life, he planets have been con- million miles (43 million kilo-
said. firmed over the past two meters) set by Helios-2 back
The $700 million mission decades, two-thirds of in 1976. And it will keep get-
even helped to uncover them thanks to Kepler. ting closer to the sun until it
last year a solar system with Kepler focused on stars flies through the corona, or
eight planets, just like ours. thousands of light-years outer atmosphere, for the
first time next week, pass-
ing within 15 million miles
(24 million kilometers) of the
solar surface.
Parker will make 24 close
approaches to the sun Parker Solar Probe sits in a clean room on July 6, 2018, at
over the next seven years, Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida, after the
ultimately coming within installation of its heat shield.
just 3.8 million miles (6 mil- Associated Press
lion kilometers). cord late Monday night. It hour (247,000 kilometers
Launched in August, Parker will surpass Helios-2’s speed per hour), relative to the
is on track to set another re- record of 153,454 miles per sun.q