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Kepler

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope is the spacecraft that just won't quit. Despite a series of setbacks in recent years, it continues to operate and return valuable data on potential exoplanets. That near came to an stop last month when the telescope roughshod back to emergency mode later on what appeared to be a complete systems failure. NASA engineers worked diligently and managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Information technology all started in the wee hours of Apr 8th when Kepler mission manager Charlie Sobeck was awoken by a phone telephone call. The telescope was locked in "emergency mode" and would exist dead soon if NASA couldn't fix it from millions of miles away. The longer the spacecraft is in emergency mode, the more fuel it burns, and it's orbiting the sun more 70 meg miles abroad from Earth. There won't be any refueling missions.

The failure occurred when Kepler was existence reoriented as part of its K2 mission. This was undertaken after the 2d of its four reaction wheels failed in 2022. With only two wheels, the telescope couldn't remain pointed at target stars to sentinel for signs of exoplanets. However, the K2 mission uses the two remaining wheels to balance the craft against the forcefulness of the solar current of air to go along it stable for limited observations of stellar phenomena and potential exoplanets. However, instead of nudging itself into a different orientation for these observations, the telescope was one stride away from full shutdown.

Kepler several operational modes including normal, safe mode, and emergency mode. If something goes wrong, Kepler would ordinarily kick over to safe mode, but emergency fashion happens when the satellite thinks all of its instruments take failed. While in emergency mode, it shuts downward the main computers and fires the thrusters to keep the solar panels pointed at the sun. This ensures NASA will be able to contact the spacecraft, merely time (and fuel) is extremely limited.

NASA's K2 balancing act

NASA's K2 balancing human activity.

The kickoff footstep in saving Kepler was to arrive contact with it. NASA was able to declare a "infinite emergency" to gain immediate priority access to the Deep Space Network of communications antennas located effectually the world. Kepler's emergency backup communications assortment was but pointed back at Earth every few hours, so information technology took three days to figure out what had happened. Kepler reported that its thrusters, primary advice hardware, and ii remaining reaction wheels had all failed. NASA wasn't ownership it. The odds of all those systems failing simultaneously were slim.

NASA was able to remotely stop the spinning, offering consistent advice. Then, they rebooted the telescope. Sure enough, the failed systems came back online without the false alarms. NASA doesn't know what caused the telescope to remember all those systems had failed, only they managed to fix the problem before all the fuel was wearied. Information technology did still burn down through quite a lot, though. NASA is still working to guess the fuel levels, but information technology's probable part of the K2 mission volition have to be cut short.