Since its launch in 2009, NASA’s space telescope Kepler is
finally going to retire. Kepler was successful in observing half a million
stars and hundreds of planets around those stars. It opened our eyes to diverse
worlds. Some totally different from our solar system. The data transmitted by Kepler is still being
used in many research projects. Scientists were also able to identify new rocky
planets the size of Earth. (Good news! They are in the habitable zone)
Kepler’s mission was to continuously look on one patch of
the sky and notice every small planet or star that appears. This mission lasted
for three and a half years. It was a huge success and started producing many exoplanets
when the data was processed. The spacecraft, now retired, is out of fuel and
will simply drift through the solar system.
Kepler completed its initial mission in 2014 but due to its
state of the art construction and optimum use of fuel it was approved for a second
mission called K2. This second phase was different from the first because it
would not have Kepler staring at one patch in the sky only. Kepler would change
its view every three months thereby covering more area. Consequently, the
number of new stars observed witnessed an upwards surge.
With the help of Kepler scientists were able to announce
the existence of more than 1200 exoplanets. Google’s AI was working to find
more exoplanets hidden in the noisy data. Kepler has burned its last reserve of
fuel and has transmitted the final batch of data through the Deep space
Network. This data will soon be available to NASA’s teams and citizen
scientists. As for the exoplanet hunt, it has been taken up by the Transiting
Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
