They're enveloped by hot, tenuous atmospheres and are likely uninhabitable, researchers say. Kepler fought on for four more years and gazed at different slices of the sky once every 80 days, on a new mission known as K2 during which it discovered hundreds more exoplanets.īoth worlds are smaller than Neptune. But two of its four reaction wheels - devices crucial to point the observatory at its targets - failed in 2013, and it was no longer able to focus on stars precisely.Ī year later, scientists implemented a work-around solution that used the telescope's two good reaction wheels and its onboard thrusters to maintain a slightly unstable but workable balance. Kepler's first four years in space went smoothly. The spacecraft documented dips in starlight that hinted at orbiting planets - a technique known as the "transit method." The Kepler telescope launched in March 2009 to stare at 150,000 selected stars in the constellation Cygnus, on a primary mission expected to last 3.5 years. Related: The 10 most Earth-like exoplanets It showcases just how good Kepler was at planet hunting, even at the end of its life." "But they're exciting because Kepler observed them during its last few days of operations. "These are fairly average planets in the grand scheme of Kepler observations," Elyse Incha, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a lead author of the new study, said in a NASA statement. So far, these are the only exoplanets that have been discovered in the telescope's final dataset, making them the very last worlds that Kepler glimpsed just before it ran out of fuel and was shut down in late 2018. NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which shut its powerful eye nearly five years ago, continued finding exoplanets even while taking its final breaths.Ī team of astrophysicists and citizen astronomers combing through the last chunk of data that Kepler sent home say they found two new worlds and a "candidate" planet closely orbiting three faint stars about 400 light-years from Earth. Illustration of three exoplanets next to a diagram of the kepler space telescope.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |