Kepler Prime Mission is over.

Artist's impression of the Kepler telescope.

The Exo-planet hunting days may be over for NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Kepler was crippled earlier this year when a second of its four reaction wheels failed. Kepler relies on these reaction wheels to maintain its orientation in space. Without these reaction wheels Kepler won’t be able to lock on to subject stars with the absolute precision needed to monitor the dip in brightness as a planet passes in front of it.

 Although Kepler is equipped with thrusters, they just do not have the performance required to do its job.  Mission Engineers did get the two wheels running again but they are unable to function properly due to friction.  Repairs are out of the question as Kepler does not orbit the earth as does the Hubble space telescope, Kepler orbits the sun and simply cannot be reached by current manned spacecraft. Even if it did orbit the earth, the space shuttle would have been the preferred if not the only vehicle capable of facilitating a repair mission. Unfortunately the shuttle is no longer in service. So repairs are a definite no go.

With Kepler’s  Prime mission now at an end, Engineers are now trying to figure out what the space telescope is capable of in its crippled state.  Right now there are a few possibilities for Kepler.  It can be used to hunt for near earth objects (NEOs), Comets and even super nova explosions. There is even a possibility that it may still have some planet finding capabilities.  According to mission specialists Kepler could still find large planets by using a technique called gravitational micro lensing.  This is done by monitoring how light from the star is bent by the gravitational field of the planet moving in front of it. There is also the possibility that thruster and the two remaining reaction wheels can be used in concert to regain some functionality.

Kepler to date has discovered 134 confirmed exoplanets in 76 stellar systems along with 3,277 unconfirmed exoplanet candidates.