According to NBCNews, Kepler was launched in March 7 2009 as a primary mission to explore the structure and diversity of the planetary systems.
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Kepler mission team and NASA can breathe a sign of relief after they managed to resuscitate the spacecraft and brought it back to normal operations from Emergency Mode (EM). It is the most prolific exoplanet hunter and recently went into emergency mode.
This was the main EM occasion that the planet-chasing telescope had experienced in its seven years in space. It also says that the EM event started hours before engineers were scheduled to orient the spacecraft toward the center of the Milky Way for Campaign 9, which NASA describes as “a study of gravitational microlensing events”. The researchers ruled out the actual maneuver for the change to EM but will be investigating further to see exactly what caused the spacecraft to enter that state. It takes 13 minutes for signals travelling at the speed of light to reach Kepler from earth, as the spacecraft is 120,000,000 kilometres away from earth. “The priority is getting the spacecraft back to doing its job, but making sure the steps taken are safe”. This means that the Deep Space Network ground communications have returned to its usual schedule, enabling telemetry and allowing experts to download historical information from the ground.
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“It was the quick response and determination of the engineers throughout the weekend that led to the recovery”, mission manager Charlie Sobeck said in a statement from NASA’s Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California. We are deeply appreciative of their efforts and for the outpouring of support from the mission’s fans and followers from around the world. “We likewise perceive the huge backing from NASA’s Deep Space Network, oversaw by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and to NASA’s different missions that surrendered their booked telemetry joins keeping in mind the end goal to give us the assets expected to secure the Kepler rocket”. The team will be carrying out an investigation into the issue in parallel to returning the spacecraft to science operations. This is a piece of a push to begin finding exoplanets close to the external areas of host stars. It is hoped that this technique could even be used to discover rogue planets – planets that don’t orbit a star and drift in space. The observatory has been incredibly successful, spotting more than 1,000 confirmed exoplanets to date-more than half of all known alien worlds-as well as 3,500 additional “candidates”, the vast majority of which will likely turn out to be the real deal. “I am very happy to be a part of this K2 campaign and look forward to the many discoveries that will be made”.
