This is it, guys: after having run out of fuel last month, NASA’s Earth Kepler team has beamed the final commands to the telescope. Its transmitters have been shut down and the automatic recovery software has now been disabled.
The radio transmitters shut down in order for them not to interfere with any communications that might be using either the same or similar frequencies and also to make sure that the spacecraft’s on-board computer will not be trying to switch them back on and try to contact Earth.
NASA’s Ames Research Center / YouTube
Kepler will slowly be inching further away from Earth in the next years and will only get back closer to our planet in 2060. This tug and pull is expected to continue for hundreds of years to come.
During all its years in service, Kepler managed to observe over 530,000 stars, confirm the existence of 2681 planets and managed to send in 678 gigabytes worth of data. with all that information on hand, astronomers managed to write and publish over 3000 scientific papers.
That number will surely continue to rise, as the scientists will still continue to analyze the Kepler-sent data for years to come.
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