Author: Lisa Grossman / Source: Science News for Students
The Kepler space telescope can no longer search for planets orbiting other stars.
After 9½ years, NASA’s premier exoplanet-hunter is out of gas.NASA officials announced the mission’s end at a news conference on October 30.
“Because of fuel exhaustion, the Kepler spacecraft has reached the end of its service life,” said Charlie Sobeck. He is a project system engineer. Sobeck works at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “While this is a sad event, we are by no means unhappy with this remarkable machine.”
Kepler’s discoveries have forever changed the way astronomers think about planets in other solar systems. Known as exoplanets, only about 350 were known to exist before Kepler launched in 2009. And nearly all of these were the size of Jupiter or larger.
As of this week, there are now more than 3,800 known exoplanets. And Kepler discovered 2,720 of them. The spacecraft found planets in all shapes, sizes and family structures. For instance, it found seven planets orbiting one star. Some planets had two suns. Other planets orbited their star at jaunty angles. And five that Kepler found orbiting one star were more than twice as old as Earth. “These planets formed at the beginning of the formation of our galaxy,” says William Borucki. “Imagine what life might be like on…
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