Kepler Spacecraft

Kepler is a space observatory that was launched by NASA, designed to explore a portion of our region of the Milky Way and to discover Earth-sized exoplanets.The spacecraft was named after astronomer Johannes Kepler. The spacecraft was launched in the year 2009 on 7th of March into an Earth-Trailing heliocentric orbit. Kepler's main instrument is a photometer that constantly monitors the brightness of approximately 150,000 continuous and distinctive bands of stars in a fixed field of view. These data are transmitted back to earth to be analyzed. The Kepler space telescope has had a profound impact on understanding of the number of worlds that exist beyond own solar system and the potential for life to exist elsewhere than we could actually know or imagine. The Kepler mission drew our attention to the fact that there are actually more planets than stars that are present in our galaxy.

Kepler has had amazing nine years of journey in space. However, since the launch there have been technical issues that have cropped up of and on. In July 14th 2012, one of the spacecrafts four reaction wheels used for pointing the spacecraft stopped turning. On May 2013 the second reaction wheel failed. On August 15th 2013 NASA announced that they had given up on fixing the failed reaction wheels which called for modification of the current mission.

However, in July 2018 the Kepler spacecraft went into a fuel saving sleep mode. It is still not clear as to how much fuel is still on board. NASA is looking into the health of the spacecraft and new options to continue with the mission.

By: Madhuchanda Saxena

Content: https://spacenews.com/kepler-spacecraft-back-in-safe-mode-as-fuel-runs-low/