Skip to content
The Mindanao Examiner Regional Newspaper

The Mindanao Examiner Regional Newspaper

Title

Name

Primary Menu
  • Home
  • Mindanao
  • Visayas
  • National
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • International
  • SciTech
  • Health & Wellness
  • Sports
  • About Us
    • Regional Advertising Rates
    • Contact Us
    • Profile
  • Home
  • International
  • NASA races to save planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft – Fox News
  • Featured
  • International
  • Technology

NASA races to save planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft – Fox News

Editor April 11, 2016

NASA is trying to resuscitate its planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, in a state of emergency nearly 75 million miles away.

The treasured spacecraft — responsible for detecting nearly 5,000 planets outside our solar system — slipped into emergency mode sometime last week. The last regular contact was April 4; everything seemed normal then.

Ground controllers discovered the problem Thursday, right before they were going to point Kepler toward the center of the Milky Way as part of a new kind of planetary survey. Kepler was going to join ground observatories in surveying millions of stars in the heart of our galaxy, in hopes of finding planets far from their suns, like our own outer planets, as well as stray planets that might be wandering between stars.

This is the latest crisis in the life of Kepler.

Launched in 2009, the spacecraft completed its primary mission in 2012. Despite repeated breakdowns, Kepler kept going on an extended mission dubbed K2 — until now. The vast 75 million-mile distance between Kepler and Earth make it all the harder to fix.

“Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back,” mission manager Charlie Sobeck said in a weekend web update from NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Recovering from this emergency condition “is the team’s priority at this time,” Sobeck said.

More than 1,000 of Kepler’s detected 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to date, according to NASA.

Kepler is named after the 17th century German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler.(Associated Press)

Link; http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/11/nasa-races-to-save-planet-hunting-kepler-spacecraft.html

fb-share-icon
Tweet 20

Continue Reading

Previous: Yemeni truce begins amid reports of clashes – Al Jazeera
Next: AP-GfK Poll: Clinton Has Edge Over Trump on Range of Issues – ABC News

Related News

JBL
  • Business
  • Technology

JBL Unleashes Next-Level Audio in Davao

Editor June 6, 2025
Hacker by Tima
  • International

South Korea’s largest telecom operator suffers mass exodus of customers over data leak

Editor June 2, 2025
Bountiful-harvest
  • Featured
  • Mindanao Post

Aquaponics to conservation: How a young farmer is growing change

Editor May 28, 2025

Trending News

JBL Unleashes Next-Level Audio in Davao JBL 1
  • Business
  • Technology

JBL Unleashes Next-Level Audio in Davao

June 6, 2025
PH mangoes land in Rome in bid to win over Italian market Mango1 2
  • Business
  • National

PH mangoes land in Rome in bid to win over Italian market

June 3, 2025
DOTr orders closure, raps vs. AirAsia Move over excessive air fares AirAsia-MOVE-app 3
  • National

DOTr orders closure, raps vs. AirAsia Move over excessive air fares

June 2, 2025
DOT assures Korean community of strengthened tourist safety measures Seo-In-Guk-&-Christina-Frasco 4
  • National
  • Tourism

DOT assures Korean community of strengthened tourist safety measures

June 2, 2025
SSS welcomes UnionDigital Bank President and CEO – talks about partnership opportunities for micro lending, for overseas Filipinos, and for transfer of technology uniondigital-bank 5
  • National

SSS welcomes UnionDigital Bank President and CEO – talks about partnership opportunities for micro lending, for overseas Filipinos, and for transfer of technology

June 2, 2025
  • Facebook
  • X
  • YouTube
  • Blog
Copyright © 2025. The Mindanao Examiner Regional Newspaper. All Rights Reserved. | MoreNews by AF themes.