NASA scrambles as Kepler telescope goes into 'emergency mode' [View all]
Source: Christian Science Monitor
The Kepler spaceship is in trouble again, and NASA scientists are diligently working to find creative fixes for a telescope flying three times further away from Earth than Venus.
NASA received a transmission on Thursday that Kepler space telescope had entered "emergency mode," according to a NASA statement. The spacecraft had switched to its maximum power setting 36 hours earlier, just as it readied for a readjustment to point towards the Milky Way galaxy center.
This transmission is not the first to send NASA scientists scrambling to find a fix during a Kepler mission. But emergency mode will force Kepler to burn quickly through its power supply, so mission control engineers for NASA's Deep Space Network in California have a tight deadline to save the $600 million spaceship.
One major challenge to fixing a spacecraft mid-mission is the remoteness of the work. No extra materials will become available to aid repair, and scientists can use only the models they have on the ground and the reports they receive. Fixing Kepler is especially difficult because its mission has taken it so far from Earth, even for a spaceship. At a distance of 75 million miles from Earth, even light-speed transmissions take 13 minutes to travel roundtrip from Kepler to its home base at NASA and back.
Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0409/NASA-scrambles-as-Kepler-telescope-goes-into-emergency-mode
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