NASA loses and regains contact with Kepler telescope
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029731
Guardian : Last week, NASA’s Kepler space telescope unexpectedly went into emergency mode, during which contact with the satellite became intermittent. Launched in 2009 and now situated roughly 120 million km from Earth, Kepler had a successful initial mission in which it detected nearly 5000 extrasolar planets by 2012. The following year, two of Kepler‘s four reaction wheels, which are used to stabilize the telescope, failed. NASA was able to repurpose the telescope for a mission dubbed K2. The unexpected loss of contact with Kepler occurred when the NASA team attempted to send commands to reorient the telescope just days before the start of a new survey. NASA was able to regain full communications with Kepler over the weekend and is now investigating what caused the emergency shutdown.
