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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Charlie Sobeck​, NASA's Kepler and K2 mission manager, has announced that the Kepler [nasa.gov] exoplanet-finding space observatory [wikipedia.org] has entered "Emergency Mode" [arstechnica.com]:

Something's gone wrong aboard the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. On Friday evening, mission manager Charlie Sobeck announced [nasa.gov] that Kepler had entered "emergency mode." This is the lowest functioning operation mode and, critically, consumes the most fuel. The last time NASA contacted Kepler, on April 4th, the spacecraft was in good health. On Thursday, however, Kepler was found to have been in emergency mode for about a day and a half. Even though it takes roughly 13 minutes for messages to travel the 120 million km from Earth to the spacecraft, it is a positive sign that NASA can still communicate with Kepler. This leaves open the possibility of some technical repair.

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