2 Big NASA Space Missions Ended This Week, But Do not Panic

2 Big NASA Space Missions Ended This Week, But Do not Panic

2 Big NASA Space Missions Ended This Week, But Do not Panic







It's easy for a superstitious mind to jump to this week's anxious conclusions, after NASA announced the end of two long-duration missions: Kepler space telescope for exoplanet hunting and the Dawn mission that visited the asteroid belt..



	

	And those high-profile endings come in the midst of a wave of problems with other spacecraft: rodent Opportunity on Mars remains silent Nearly five months after a dust storm engulfed the planet, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory briefly disconnected in October.

		But as the NASA staff stood out during a press conference on Tuesday (October 30) to announce the end of Kepler's mission, the sudden outbreak of bad news is no cause for panic. "We always try to get all the science we can out of our spacecraft," said Paul Hertz, NASA's chief astrophysicist in the Science Mission Directorate, during the press conference, adding that the agency has more than 60 spacecraft. of science working correctly. now.

The[[Gallery: A world of Kepler planets]

		"If you only choose those who are nearing the end of your life, then you can make a story, but if you look at the entire portfolio of spacecraft, I do not think we have any problems, I think you are in a golden age of science. NASA, "said Hertz.





						


NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope has run out of fuel, agency officials announced on October 30, 2018. The planet-hunting space telescope uncovered thousands of alien worlds around distant stars since its launch in 2009.

            						    Credit: NASA / Wendy Stenzel / Daniel Rutter 


		Both the Kepler telescope, which identified more than 2,600 strange planets, and the Dawn spacecraft, which visited the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres, ended up because they no longer had enough gas in the tank. Engineers in both missions knew that their goals were nearing, since they could calculate the remaining fuel estimates.

		Both ships used chemical fuel to return to Earth and transmit their findings home; without that fuel there was no way to learn from our distant emissaries. Of course, each mission theoretically could have been supplied with more fuel, but not without fattening their prices. And both missions lasted much longer than they were initially designed to resist, overcoming serious mechanical problems along the way.



	When the Kepler mission    started in April 2009, it was originally designed to last three years; instead, it lasted until 2013, when two broken reaction wheels forced their original mission. The telescope engineers still did not abandon it; instead, they reprogrammed it, so that instead of looking for exoplanets in a particular patch of the sky, it jumped from one region to another. Reincarnated, the telescope completed another four years of observations.



	Dawn Failures in the reaction wheel also survived that threatened to put the ship aside at the end of its stay in the asteroid Vesta. In Dawn's case, the engineers rescued him using fuel to make small adjustments to his position. This spaceship also went from its original timeline, spending 14 months in Vesta instead of the seven scheduled years and more than three years in the dwarf planet Ceres instead of the five months programmed.

		Although the rover Opportunity's fate remains unknown as NASA is still trying to revive it until January.The rover has exceeded its objectives as dramatically as its space cohorts. Their mission was originally scheduled to last only 90 Martian days, each approximately 40 minutes longer than an Earth one. Instead, the rover has bet on the Red Planet for more than 14 years.

The[[10 years on Mars: Smithsonian celebrates spirit, Opportunities Rovers (Photos)]

		(Opportunity's planetary partner, the Curiosity rover, also had a small problem in his work when an error disconnected your active computer offline. The engineers managed to get the robot to change to its second identical "brain".





						


Artistic illustration of NASA's Opportunity rover on the surface of Mars.

            						    Credit: NASA 


		As for the latest contenders for dropped ships this fall, both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray observatory The problems were never expected to be fatal injuries. In both cases, the engineers knew that the scientific instruments were unharmed, and that the problems were probable caused by telescopes gyroscopes, which control how instruments are oriented in space.

		Beyond the list of casualties, NASA also has some beginnings that are worth remembering. His satellite of exploration of exoplanets in transit, or TESS, resumed what Kepler left, beginning the observations at the end of July, and Already identified multiple possible planets. The mission of Parker's solar probe to "touch the sun" was launched in August and is being carried out his first approach to our star this week.

		NASA's new Mars lander, called InSight, will land right after Thanksgiving, ready to study the interior of the Red Planet, and the New Horizons spacecraft will ring in the new year passing a distant object from the Kuiper belt.

		So fasten your seatbelt, this ride is not over.



	Email Meghan Bartels in mbartels@space.com or follow it @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom Y Facebook. Original article about Space.com.

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