NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope Is Out Of Trouble

NASA reports that it has succeeded in breathing new life into the Kepler space telescope and taking it out of the so-called emergency mode. After analyzing the data, it will be checked whether the telescope is able to start Campaign 9.

On Sunday morning, US time, Kepler was able to get a stable state with the communication antenna in the right direction, allowing remote communication via the Deep Space Network again. Now it is important that the information surrounding the event is thoroughly analyzed when it arrives on Earth.

After analysis, it is determined whether Kepler’s condition is still good enough to be put back into science mode to begin the K2 mission part of Campaign 9 in search of exoplanets. During this research, Kepler looks at the center of the Milky Way. The mission ends on July 1 when the center of the Milky Way is no longer in view of the telescope.

On March 23, Kepler completed the previous K2 mission. After the data was received on Earth, the spacecraft was put into rest or point rest state. During PRS, the spacecraft’s antenna faces Earth and is in a very low fuel consumption mode.

The emergency mode started about 14 hours before the planned maneuver to target Kepler at the center of the Milky Way for Campaign 9. It is not yet clear what caused Kepler to enter emergency mode. Along with further preparations to put Kepler back into science mode, the NASA team is investigating the cause of the outage.

While communicating with Kepler in emergency mode, Kepler was given priority over communication via the Deep Space Network, forcing other missions communicating over the network to temporarily suspend their messages back and forth. The network, meanwhile, has returned to its normal communications schedule.