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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

A bot called Arthur has collected the following story from the RSS feeds:

The most recent update explains that Kepler embarked on its 19th observation campaign on Aug. 29. It was woken from "sleep mode" but one of its thrusters exhibited "unusual behaviour". The short update also states that the the telescope's "pointing performance" may be adversely affected.

The space telescope, originally launched in March 2009, has had a tumultuous year. The team placed Kepler into hibernation in July, as their new planet-hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), began testing for its own mission. The hibernation-like state was to ensure that the data from Kepler's 18th mission, stored onboard the spacecraft, would be able to make its way back to Earth.

That data was successfully downloaded on Aug. 9, as NASA monitored Kepler's health before placing it into sleep mode on Aug. 24.

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