The Kepler Space Telescope is running out of fuel

The Kepler Space Telescope will run out of fuel in the next few months, NASA experts say. The mission of this distinguished planet hunter is coming to an end, but his successors will soon be in space.

– Our estimates mobind that the Kepler Space Telescope’s reservoirs will run out of within a few months. Kepler’s mission wkrotce will end, but we will continue to operate until the fuel runs out – said Charlie Sobeck, system engineeroon the mission of the Kepler Space Telescope.

– We plan to collect as much scientific data as possible in our remaining time and send it to Earth. Running out of fuel also means no data transfer – added. Scientists with leftover fuel want to direct the antenna toward Earth to send the last data packet.

The Kepler Space Telescope has been put into orbit wokoł of the sun in 2009 and its headoThe primary task is to search for Earth-like planets. It measures the brightnesses of stars in search of small, regular fainter brightnesses, whichore may be due to the planet’s circulation wokoł stars. If the plane of a planet’s orbit is properly aligned with our line of sight, such a planet will periodically pass in front of its star – make a transit, which will result in a periodic decrease in brightness.

After many years of smooth operation, the telescope’s reaction wheel failed in 2013, forcing a change in the search formula. The new research concept has been dubbed the K2 mission and involves krotier observations of other regionsoin the sky than the constellations of Lute and Swan observed so far.

Thanks to this observatory, some 2,649 extrasolar planets have already been discovered and verified, but there are still quite a few objects yet to be discoveredoin awaiting verification. There are two distinct populations of exoplanets. These are rocky worlds similar to ours and gaseous planets, much smaller than Neptune. Researchers estimate that about half of the planets discovered are gaseous worlds with no solid surface or have an atmosphere so thick and dense that life as we know it is out of the question on them. Among the verified planets are dozens of Earth-like planets with potential conditions conducive to the development of life as we know it.

The data acquired by the Kepler Space Telescope is so large that astronomers must be assisted by volunteers, whooers already have a track record of considerable success. Amateur astronomers have managed to discover a planetary system with five planets. Volunteers accomplished this with the Exoplanet Explorers project, part of the Zooniverse online platform. Recently, artificial intelligence has also been harnessed to the task, resulting in the discovery of a planetary system very similar to our solar system.

The Kepler Space Telescope wniofossil fuel a huge contribution to the development ofoj of this young field, zaroboth in its original mission and in the next K2 mission. But wkrotce astronomers get new tools to observe and study the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope is expected to begin operation as early as next year. It can provide exciting new data about the Universe around us.

Earlier this year, on April 16, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) telescope is scheduled to launch into space. TESS is expected to eventually be in high elliptical Earth orbit and will survey the sky for exoplanets. Its mission is expected to last about twooch years. During this time it was planned to look at about 500 thousand. stars. TESS will be equipped with state-of-the-art high-end equipment, which will allow a more accurate search than before. Scientists are hoping for spectacular discoveries.