On May 16, 2014, NASA announced the approval of the K2 extension. This would include utilizing the disabled Kepler in a way that could detect habitable planets around smaller, dimmer red dwarfs. On November 18, 2013, the K2 "Second Light" proposal was reported. NASA had asked the space science community to propose alternative mission plans "potentially including an exoplanet search, using the remaining two good reaction wheels and thrusters". This meant the current mission needed to be modified, but it did not necessarily mean the end of planet-hunting. On August 15, 2013, NASA announced that they had given up trying to fix the two failed reaction wheels. Then, on May 11, 2013, a second reaction wheel failed, disabling the collection of science data and threatening the continuation of the mission. Initially, in 2012, the mission was expected to be extended until 2016, but on July 14, 2012, one of the spacecraft's four reaction wheels used for pointing the spacecraft stopped turning, and completing the mission would only be possible if all other reaction wheels remained reliable. The initial planned lifetime was 3.5 years, but greater-than-expected noise in the data, from both the stars and the spacecraft, meant additional time was needed to fulfill all mission goals. The Ames Research Center is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations since December 2009, and scientific data analysis. The telescope's construction and initial operation were managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with Ball Aerospace responsible for developing the Kepler flight system. Kepler is part of NASA's Discovery Program of relatively low-cost, focused primary science missions. This data is transmitted to Earth, then analyzed to detect periodic dimming caused by exoplanets that cross in front of their host star. The spacecraft, named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit.ĭesigned to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way to discover Earth-size exoplanets in or near habitable zones and estimate how many of the billions of stars in the Milky Way have such planets, Kepler 's sole science instrument is a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Lua error in a at line 80: module 'Module:No globals' not found. For other uses, see Kepler (disambiguation). For the telescope invented by Johannes Kepler, see Keplerian Telescope. ![]() For the European cargo spacecraft, see Johannes Kepler ATV. This article is about the NASA space telescope.
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