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posted by mrpg on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the wait-didn't-he-die-on-November-15-1630? dept.

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

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @12:21PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @12:21PM (#755989)

    link: https://news.yahoo.com/nasas-planet-hunter-telescope-kepler-runs-fuel-193852963.html [yahoo.com]
    "
    Kepler showed 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," NASA said in a statement.
    "
    Amazing! Should paint a a much more life-friendly-universe if plugged into the drake equation?
    link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation [wikipedia.org]

    Also gives me hope that there "must" be a way to reach these "distant" places; A universe that allows to look but not touch seems ... incomplete.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:35PM (2 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:35PM (#756006)

      A universe that allows to look but not touch seems ... incomplete.

      The universe is a strip club, prove me wrong.

      Kraus, the "father of radio astronomy" had an entire section in his classic textbook about how humanity looks when viewed from interstellar scales in a radio wave perspective, in a relative way like how he had entire chapters on how nebulas and pulsars and stuff looked when viewed from Earth.

      I won't waste time trying to summarize a chapter, plus the minimal research funded on the topic since then, but it seems even using last centuries technology even a relatively small nation-state thats extroverted enough could easily make a social statement along the lines of "primate pride day" or whatever using numerous different technologies, some not entirely obvious. But.... nobody out there does... Note that it is/should be easier to hear/notice someone being actively outspoken and loud vs this "hunt for red october" stuff trying to observe passive natural objects; its hard to notice a big boulder in the distance but easy to notice a hundred times smaller and lighter fire engine with all the lights and sirens on and it only takes a couple hundred watts to run that 19th century noisemaker stuff.

      Maybe its good that the kind of people who fund Christian shortwave radio broadcasters, are not the kind of people who read obscure radio astronomy textbooks and papers. It would be quite affordable by modern standards for a relatively small gang of nuts to broadcast any old rando content to space aliens.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:10AM (1 child)

        by Immerman (3985) on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:10AM (#756248)

        > It would be quite affordable by modern standards for a relatively small gang of nuts to broadcast any old rando content to space aliens.

        But what would be the motivation? Missionary work is almost always used as a means of cultural conquest for the purpose of accumulating institutional and personal wealth and power, usually alongside military conquest - which would be effectively impossible against any aliens capable of sending anything of value to Earth.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:12AM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:12AM (#756405)

          I'd propose the existence of twitter as a counterexample. I'm a better person than others because I wrote XYZ, even if nobody important is participating.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:49PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:49PM (#756010)

    the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

    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)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:20PM (#756076) Journal

      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.

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      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:23AM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:23AM (#756408)

        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.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:50PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:50PM (#756058)

    So long, and thanks for all the orbs.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:25PM (3 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:25PM (#756100) Journal

    I hope the telescope is not going to decay and shed material over the next century or however long it's left in orbit. Really ought to be brought back to Earth.

    But I certainly understand letting it stay until such time as cleanup costs have significantly dropped. After an honorable and productive career of planet finding, it can continue as a symbol of our cultural disregard of cleaning up after ourselves.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:35PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:35PM (#756104) Journal

      NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth.

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    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:20PM (1 child)

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:20PM (#756151)

      I hope the telescope is not going to decay and shed material...

      I also wondered that, so I checked. It is in a heliocentric orbit, which I assume means it is orbiting the Sun not Earth, so we should be fine.

      The other phrase which caught my eye is "Deep Space".

      It seems a shame to me that "Deep Space" is still so close to Earth. Deep space conjures up images of the edges of our solar system to me, but we have made hardly any progress in that direction at all.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @07:35PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @07:35PM (#756583)

        I think that it is used as opposed to LEO/GEO.

        Basically, we have:
        LEO
        GEO
        Deep space
        Interstellar space
        Intergalactic space

  • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:24PM (2 children)

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:24PM (#756156) Journal

    Presumably you could hold an orientation with the reaction wheels long enough for image taking.

    Maybe it would not be as flexible as before, but it seems like it still might have some viability. What am I missing?

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    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 31 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 31 2018, @09:29PM (#756185) Journal

      I don't know what you are missing, but Kepler misses hydrazine move those reaction wheels.

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      • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday October 31 2018, @10:06PM

        by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 31 2018, @10:06PM (#756206) Journal

        The reaction wheels are electrically powered. What I had forgotten is that only two of the reaction wheels are still functioning. NASA was able to figure a way to function more or less without the other two wheels, scanning only the ecliptic for exoplanets, but i suspect they needed to use hydrazine occassionally anyway, which is no longer possible.

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