The Kepler spacecraft has been brought back from the dead [View all]

[Ichingcarpenter]

Last week, things were looking pretty bleak for the planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope when it unexpectedly went into 'emergency mode' (EM) just before its latest campaign was due to start. NASA scientists promptly declared a 'state of emergency' and diverted all ground communications towards rescuing the mission.

But the Kepler team has just made everyone's week by announcing that they've managed to recover the spacecraft from EM and get it back online again - and will hopefully have it back in 'science mode' soon.

NASA scientists still aren't quite sure what happened - they're waiting for Kepler's data from the past couple of weeks to be downloaded before they can piece together what went wrong - but in the meantime, everyone's feeling pretty relieved about the telescope's fate.

"On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground," wrote mission manager Charlie Sobeck.

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-kepler-spacecraft-has-been-brought-back-from-the-dead