NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope in Trouble Again

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is in trouble again. The spacecraft has been in emergency mode since sometime last week, but why is not known. NASA is currently working to get Kepler working again.

NASA doesn’t say why Kepler put itself in Emergency Mode. It may not even know this itself at the moment. On April 4, NASA was still in contact with the space telescope and everything was fine. Emergency mode is described as the state with ‘least functionality’ and ‘high in fuel consumption’. Kepler already suffered damage to its gyroscopic flywheel in 2014, but NASA managed to compensate this remotely with a ‘trick’.

Getting to grips with the Kepler problem is complicated by the distance between Earth and the spacecraft, which is currently orbiting space more than 120 million kilometers away. “Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back,” said K2 mission manager Charlie Sobeck. The condition is considered an emergency and communications with Kepler are prioritized with the agency’s Deep Space Network. Those are the dishes in California, Spain and Australia.

The Kepler Space Telescope was launched by NASA in 2009 with a mission to detect potentially habitable planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Over the years, Kepler has found several ‘Earth-like’ planets in the universe. In total, Kepler has identified nearly a thousand exoplanets. The space telescope completed its mission in 2012 and then started another mission, called K2. In doing so, it continues its search for exoplanets and also provides the opportunity for NASA to study stars, supernovas and other objects.