Kepler Space Telescope Bid ‘Goodnight’ With Final Set Of Commands

November 16, 2018 – On Thursday night, NASA’s Kepler house telescope obtained its closing set of instructions to disconnect communications with Earth. The “goodnight” instructions finalize the spacecraft’s transition into retirement, which started on October 30 with NASA’s announcement that Kepler had run out of gas and will not conduct science.

Coincidentally, Kepler’s “goodnight” coincides with the anniversary of the loss of life of its namesake, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who found the legal guidelines of planetary movement and died 388 years in the past on November 15, 1630.

The ultimate instructions had been despatched over NASA’s Deep Area Community from Kepler’s operations heart on the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Area Physics, or LASP, on the College of Colorado in Boulder. LASP runs the spacecraft’s operations on behalf of NASA and Ball Aerospace & Applied sciences Company in Boulder, Colorado.

Kepler’s group disabled the security modes that might inadvertently flip techniques again on, and severed communications by shutting down the transmitters. As a result of the spacecraft is slowly spinning, the Kepler group needed to fastidiously time the instructions in order that directions would attain the spacecraft during times of viable communication. The group will monitor the spacecraft to make sure that the instructions had been profitable. The spacecraft is now drifting in a protected orbit across the Solar 94 million miles away from Earth.

The info Kepler collected over the course of greater than 9 years in operation can be mined for thrilling discoveries for a few years to come back.

NASA’s Ames Analysis Middle in California’s Silicon Valley manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission improvement. Ball Aerospace & Applied sciences Company operates the flight system with assist from LASP.