Space Agency NASA announced that the space telescope “Kepler”, which searches for earth-like planets near sun-like stars entered in hibernation mode. At this step the Agency has gone due to the fact that to date, the fuel reserves at the space Observatory was almost depleted. To even briefly extend the life of the veteran spacecraft observations, NASA transferred “Kepler” for a few weeks in sleep mode.
In March, NASA warned that “Kepler” has been functioning his last months of life. On Monday, the Agency noted a decrease in fuel pressure. The system demonstrated its almost complete absence. From this point the space telescope will no longer conduct scientific observations and hold in the sleep state until August 2, after which a team of scientists is going to get all scientific data that Kepler has collected over the past 51 days.
May 12 this year, the space Observatory was conducting surveillance of the cut space in the direction of the constellation Cancer. In the same place “Kepler” have seen in 2015. Recent data collected by the telescope will help scientists confirm candidates in exoplanets that have been discovered in this area during the first observation, and perhaps also to find a new ekzoplanety.
In early August, the telescope is scheduled to Wake up. The antenna will direct towards the Earth, and he will give all the collected data. If all goes according to plan, the following observation with a telescope is planned for August 6. This task is likely to be the last for this space Observatory.
“Kepler” was launched into space in 2009. Since that time, the space Observatory has worked much longer than the three-year planned lifetime, having collected a huge amount of scientific data and found 2650 exoplanets. Even after the completion of the mission “Kepler”, scientists still have a very long time to understand all of the information collected. According to NASA, analysis of these data in the coming years can turn into at least another one thousand scientific publications.
Last moments: the space telescope “Kepler” was put into hibernation mode
Nikolai Khizhnyak