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NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope
After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets - more planets even than stars - NASA's Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel needed for further science operations. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.
"As NASA's first planet-hunting mission, Kepler has wildly exceeded all our expectations and paved the way for our exploration and search for life in the solar system and beyond," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Not only did it show us how many planets could be out there, it sparked an entirely new and robust field of research that has taken the science community by storm. Its discoveries have shed a new light on our place in the universe, and illuminated the tantalizing mysteries and possibilities among the stars."
Kepler has opened our eyes to the diversity of planets that exist in our galaxy. The most recent analysis of Kepler's discoveries concludes that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky are likely to have small, possibly rocky, planets similar in size to Earth, and located within the habitable zone of their parent stars. That means they're located at distances from their parent stars where liquid water - a vital ingredient to life as we know it - might pool on the planet surface.
[...] Before retiring the spacecraft, scientists pushed Kepler to its full potential, successfully completing multiple observation campaigns and downloading valuable science data even after initial warnings of low fuel. The latest data, from Campaign 19, will complement the data from NASA's newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in April. TESS builds on Kepler's foundation with fresh batches of data in its search of planets orbiting some 200,000 of the brightest and nearest stars to the Earth, worlds that can later be explored for signs of life by missions such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
The Dawn spacecraft orbiting Ceres will also exhaust the remainder of its hydrazine in the coming days. It will maintain an orbit around Ceres for decades, if not centuries.
Also at The Verge and Associated Press.
Previously: Kepler Space Telescope Put into Hibernation Mode before Start of 19th Observation Campaign
NASA's Kepler Telescope Wakes Up, Begins Hunting for Planets Again
Related:
NASA Kepler Telescope Discovers 715 New Planets
Kepler Proves it can Still Find Planets
74 Small Exoplanets With Circular Orbits Identified
NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Earth-Like Planet In Sun-Like Star's Habitable Zone
Kepler Extended Mission Finds More Exoplanets
NASA's Kepler Mission Doubles Number of "Verified" Exoplanets, Including 9 Potentially Habitable
NASA Identifies "Pumpkin Stars"
Kepler Exoplanet Results Briefing on June 19th, Conference From 19th-23rd
Google Researchers Discover an 8th Planet in the Kepler-90 System
Citizen Scientists Credited for Discovery of Multi-Planet System
Kepler's K2 Mission Going Strong With Another 95 New Exoplanets Confirmed
Kepler Telescope Spots a Fast Supernova
NASA's TESS Mission Set to Launch on Wednesday, April 18
Researchers Suggest an Abundance of "Water World" Exoplanets
NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Nears the End of its Mission
New Evidence Supports Existence of Neptune-Sized Exomoon Orbiting Kepler-1625b
Gaia Observations Could Reduce the Number of Exoplanets Considered Potentially Habitable
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:49PM (2 children)
Any AAVSO in the house?
I've been screwing around very slowly in my limited spare time trying to do the above, on earth, using the usual mounts and DSLR camera and the popular (icky windows only) software.
I'll be happy if I get a decent light curve for Algol someday (Beta Persei star, not the retrocomputing language)
Like many technical hobbies, what appears simple in theory ends up being annoyingly complex in practice, optimizing the conversion of money and time into best optimized system results is tricky, and you can trade time for money and vice versa but not always and good luck figuring all this stuff out.
For those who don't know about TESS AFAIK its doing the same kind of photometry you can do on the ground, just vastly better, looking for those little spikes in the light curve while planets pass in front, whereas most earth based amateurs are happy with slower stellar eclipse stuff and astrophysics variations in luminosity like Algol the eclipse star or Cepheid variables in general. If I lived on the moon and had my gear with me, I'd look for eclipsing / transiting planets too...
One of those interesting infinite spare time hobbies. Best experienced where weather and mosquitoes don't limit observation time as much as where I live, unfortunately.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:20PM (1 child)
Aren't occultations and gravitational lenses the hot (or cool) things to look for from the ground?
Otherwise, it would be interesting if we had CubeSats that could be trained on individual stars to observe them continuously. Maybe do it with the closer stars. Although perhaps it would have no benefit compared to what TESS can do with the stars that are nearly always within its field of view (refer to this illustration [spiedigitallibrary.org]). Still, amateurs could put their money together and launch CubeSats.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:23AM
Possibly... transits are kind fast and need kinda high accuracy which implies needing a big aperture and minimal atmosphere to catch them, so a tiny cubesat might be pushing it, although I haven't run the numbers on ideal vs realistic vs non-ideal situations.
As for radial velocity / doppler shift, I know the spectrashift people have had success on the ground ... with a 16 inch mirror ... which would be a struggle to fit something similar in even the giant 6U cubesat spec.