Wolf 503b, an exoplanet twice the size of Earth, has been discovered by an international team of Canadian, American and German researchers using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The find is described in a new study whose lead author is Merrin Peterson, an Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx) graduate student who started her master’s degree at Université de Montréal (UdeM) in May.

Wolf 503b is about 145 light years from Earth in the Virgo constellation; it orbits its star every six days and is thus very close to it, about 10 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun.

“The discovery and confirmation of this new exoplanet was very rapid, thanks to the collaboration that I and my advisor, Björn Benneke, are a part of,” Peterson said. “In May, when the latest release of Kepler K2 data came in, we quickly ran a program that allowed us to find as many interesting candidate exoplanets as possible. Wolf 503b was one of them.”

The program the team used identifies distinct, periodic dips that appear in the light curve of a star when a planet passes in front of it. In order to better characterize the system Wolf 503b is part of, the astronomers first obtained a spectrum of the host star at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. This confirmed the star is an old ‘orange dwarf’, slightly less luminous than the Sun but about twice as old, and allowed a precise determination of the radius of both the star and its companion.

To confirm the companion was indeed a planet and to avoid making a false positive identification, the team obtained adaptive optics measurements from Palomar Observatory and also examined archival data. With these, they were able to confirm that there were no binary stars in the background and that the star did not have another, more massive companion that could be interpreted as a transiting planet.

Wolf 503b is interesting, firstly, because of its size. Thanks to the Kepler telescope, we know that most of the planets in the Milky Way that orbit close to their stars are about as big as Wolf 503b, somewhere between that the size of the Earth and Neptune (which is 4 times bigger than Earth). Since there is nothing like them in our solar system, astronomers wonder whether these planets are small and rocky ‘super-Earths’ or gaseous mini versions of Neptune.

One recent discovery also shows that there are significantly fewer planets that are between 1.5 and 2 times the size of Earth than those either smaller or larger than that. This drop, called the Fulton gap, could be what distinguishes the two types of planets from each other, researchers say in their study of the discovery, published in 2017.

“Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study that will better constrain its true nature,” explained Björn Benneke, an UdeM professor and member of iREx and CRAQ. “It provides a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of ‘super-Earths’ and ‘sub-Neptunes’ as a whole.”

The second reason for interest in the Wolf 503b system is that the star is relatively close to Earth, and thus very bright. One of the possible follow-up studies for bright stars is the measurement of their radial velocity to determine the mass of the planets in orbit around them.

A more massive planet will have a greater gravitational influence on its star, and the variation in line-of-sight velocity of the star over time will be greater. The mass, together with the radius determined by Kepler’s observations, gives the bulk density of the planet, which in turn tells us something about its composition. For example, at its radius, if the planet has a composition similar to Earth, it would have to be about 14 times its mass. If, like Neptune, it has an atmosphere rich in gas or volatiles, it would be approximately half as massive.

Because of its brightness, Wolf 503 will also be a prime target for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Using a technique called transit spectroscopy, it will be possible to study the chemical content of the planet’s atmosphere, and to detect the presence of molecules like hydrogen and water. This is crucial to verify if it is similar to that of the Earth, Neptune or completely different from the atmospheres of planets in our solar system.

Similar observations can’t be made of most planets found by Kepler, because their host stars are usually much fainter. As a result, the bulk densities and atmospheric compositions of most exoplanets are still unknown.

“By investigating the nature of Wolf 503b, we’ll understand more about the structure of planets near the radius gap and more generally about the diversity of exoplanets present in our galaxy,” said Peterson. “I look forward to learning more about it.”</s>An exoplanet twice the size of Earth, known as Wolf 503b, has been found just 145 light-years away from our home planet.

The researchers noted that Wolf 503b is interesting not only because of its size (it may potentially be a "Super-Earth"), but also because of its orbit — it revolves around its star once every six days.

An exoplanet is a planet outside our solar system.

"Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study that will better constrain its true nature," said Björn Benneke, a UdeM professor, in a statement. "It provides a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of 'super-Earths' and 'sub-Neptunes' as a whole."

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The findings were published in a study conducted by American, Canadian and German researchers. Merrin Peterson, a graduate student from the Institute for research on exoplanets is the lead author on the study.

The new exoplanet was found using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which provided a further affirmation that most planets in the Milky Way galaxy are approximately the same size as Wolf 503b.

"Since there is nothing like them in our solar system, astronomers wonder whether these planets are small and rocky 'super-Earths' or gaseous mini versions of Neptune," the statement added.

Wolf 503b's close proximity to Earth makes it appear brighter than other objects in the sky. Given its brightness, researchers are hoping to next look at the mass of the planet, which could tell something about its composition.

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If it has a composition similar to Earth, it would have to have a bulk density approximately 14 times its mass. If it were like Neptune, with an atmosphere largely comprised of gas, "it would be approximately half as massive," researchers said.

The program used to identify Wolf 503b also found that its host star is an orange dwarf, meaning its not as bright as our Sun, but twice as old. Peterson said that the discovery and confirmation of the new exoplanet "was very rapid," citing the latest release of the Kepler K2 data in May.

Due to its proximity to Earth, Wolf 503, the star Wolf 503b orbits, will be a "prime target" for the James Webb Space Telescope, which will help determine the planet's atmosphere and see if it contains any of the necessary building blocks for life, including hydrogen and water.

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"By investigating the nature of Wolf 503b, we'll understand more about the structure of planets near the radius gap and more generally about the diversity of exoplanets present in our galaxy," said Peterson. "I look forward to learning more about it."

The find is the latest in a host of new planet discoveries. In February 2017, an international team of astronomers announced the discovery of 60 new planets orbiting stars close to Earth’s Solar System, including a rocky “super Earth.”

In the same month, NASA revealed the discovery of seven Earth-like planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 40 light years from Earth. Three of the planets are in the “habitable zone” where liquid water can exist, according to scientists.

Two months later, in a separate research project, scientists reported that an exoplanet 40 light-years from Earth may be the best place to look for signs of life outside our solar system.

ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER 60 NEW WORLDS, FIND 'SUPER EARTH'

Earlier this year, for the first time, scientists announced the discovery of planets in galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, a team of astrophysicists from the University of Oklahoma identified the extragalactic planets about 3.8 billion light-years away. The space observatory helped scientists find about 2,000 objects with comparable mass to the Moon and Jupiter.

Fox News' James Rogers contributed to this story. Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia</s>The size of the newfound exoplanet places it right in the middle between Earth and Neptune, which is four times larger than our home planet.

Leading an entire team of astronomers from universities in Canada, Germany, and the U.S., grad school student Merrin Peterson has just discovered a new exoplanet “twice the size of Earth,” reports Science Daily.

The newfound planet orbits on old and bright star known as Wolf 503 and has been given the name Wolf 503b.

Peterson made the incredible discovery soon after starting her graduate studies at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets of the Université de Montréal in Canada, notes Outer Places.

And, as she herself points out, everything came together quite smoothly.

“The discovery and confirmation of this new exoplanet was very rapid, thanks to the collaboration that I and my advisor, Björn Benneke, are a part of,” Peterson said in a statement.

Together with Benneke, Peterson looked through data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, specifically everything gathered during the spacecraft’s 17th observational campaign, and used the tried-and-true transiting method to spot any potential exoplanets.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, the transiting method involves searching for tiny dips in the brightness of a star, caused by an orbiting planet as it passes in front of it.

“In May, when the latest release of Kepler K2 data came in, we quickly ran a program that allowed us to find as many interesting candidate exoplanets as possible. Wolf 503b was one of them,” said Peterson.

Wolf 503b and its parent star are found a mere 145 light-years away from Earth, in the Virgo constellation, and make a very interesting pair.

For one thing, the exoplanet circles its star in a very tight orbit and sits about 10 times closer to Wolf 503 than Mercury is to the sun. At the same time, Wolf 503b has a radius of 2.03 times that of Earth, which places the exoplanet right near the Fulton gap — a marker that divides all the known Kepler planets into super-Earths and sub-Neptunes based on their size.

First described in a study published last year in the Astronomical Journal, the Fulton gap refers to a shortage of Kepler exoplanets ranging between 1.5 and two times the size of Earth. The study argues that most of the small planets discovered by Kepler and which orbit very close to their stars are either super-Earths, with a radius smaller than 1.5 times that of our planet, or sub-Neptunes, with two to three times the radius of Earth.

“Since there is nothing like them in our solar system, astronomers wonder whether these planets are small and rocky ‘super-Earths’ or gaseous mini-versions of Neptune,” explains Science Daily, citing the Université de Montréal.

Studying Wolf 503b will help scientists figure out more this peculiar class of exoplanets.

“It provides a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of ‘super-Earths’ and ‘sub-Neptunes’ as a whole,” said Benneke.

Meanwhile, Wolf 503 is what astronomers call an “orange dwarf” — a star slightly bigger than our sun, with a mass 0.45 to 0.8 times larger, and slightly less luminous. A more famous example of an orange dwarf star is Alpha Centauri B, one of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system sitting right on our cosmic doorstep and which could be friendly to life, as recently reported by the Inquisitr.

Unlike Alpha Centauri B, which is only a bit older than the sun, Wolf 503 is about twice as old. Its brightness and close proximity to our planet makes it a perfect study candidate for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, report the sources.

Once is launches in 2021, the telescope could find out more about the atmospheric composition of Wolf 503b by scoping out its parent star with a technique called transit spectroscopy. This will show whether the exoplanet has hydrogen or water molecules in its atmosphere.

“Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study that will better constrain its true nature,” said Benneke.

The discovery of Wolf 503b, along with everything we’ve learned about the exoplanet so far, is detailed in a paper available on the pre-print server arXiv.</s>Unwilling to go quietly into that good night, the Kepler Space Telescope is once again gathering scientific data—despite a malfunctioning thruster and painfully low levels of fuel.



With the $600 million Kepler Space Telescope high atop our dead pool lists, this brief report published yesterday by NASA comes as a rather pleasant and unexpected surprise:

The Kepler spacecraft began collecting science data on Aug. 29 for its 19th observation campaign. After being roused from sleep mode the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behavior exhibited by one of the thrusters. Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded. It remains unclear how much fuel remains; NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft.

Incredible. After nine years of active service, a near-death experience in 2013, and 2,327 confirmed exoplanets under its belt, Kepler continues to be the little space-based telescope that could.

Back on August 24, Kepler was put into sleep mode after an anomalous drop in fuel pressure—but not before transmitting data collected during the 18th campaign of the K2 phase of the mission. As the spacecraft hibernated (for the second time in as many months) and possibly waited for death, mission controllers carefully monitored Kepler’s health, trying to figure out if it could participate in another survey, and if so, which functions might still be available.

As it turns out, there’s still some life left in this fighter, with Kepler returning to active duty on August 29—though with some limitations. There’s apparently nothing wrong with Kepler, aside from the low fuel and an issue with one of its eight thrusters. Oh, and the fact that Kepler has only been able to use two of its four reaction control wheels, which it uses to maintain orientation, since 2013.

“One of the eight thrusters had shown unreliable performance, but the team estimated that simply removing the thruster from use during precision pointing firings could result in acceptable system performance,” Alison Hawkes, a spokesperson at NASA’s Ames Research Center, told SpaceNews. “As a result, the changes were made and Campaign 19 was, as it were, joined in progress.”



The cause of the malfunctioning thruster is not known, but the low fuel may have something to do with it. NASA doesn’t really know. But if other thrusters start to fail, it’s a good sign the low fuel has something to do with it.

With one of eight thrusters shut down, Kepler is now less stable against the incoming solar pressure, making the telescope’s precision pointing performance a bit less... precise. NASA won’t know if Kepler is making observations of any quality until the data gets transmitted back to Earth, which should happen in a couple of months. Unless of course, Kepler runs out of fuel, finally ending the mission that began in 2009. Sadly, Kepler doesn’t come with a fuel gauge, so it’s a bit of a guessing game.

The end of the Kepler era is sad, no doubt, but NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) began operations on July 25, 2018. The hunt for distant exoplanets has only just begun.</s>NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has woken up from yet another slumber and begun collecting science data again, the US space agency has said. It began collecting science data on August 29 for its 19th observation campaign.

“After being roused from sleep mode, the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behaviour exhibited by one of the thrusters,” NASA said in a statement on Thursday. “Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded. It remains unclear how much fuel remains; NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft,” it added.

In July, NASA placed the spacecraft, with 2,650 confirmed planets, in a hibernation-like state in preparation to download the science data collected in its latest observation campaign. On August 3, Kepler successfully began downloading its store of science data from its Campaign 18 and then went into sleep mode after downloading Campaign 18 data on August 24.

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Launched in 2009, the Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-sized and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets. Among other findings, recently 24 new planet discoveries were made using data from the 10th observation campaign, adding to the spacecraft’s growing bounty of 2,650 confirmed planets.

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The Kepler space telescope, which is now 94 million miles away from Earth, has survived many potential knock-outs during its nine years in flight, from mechanical failures to being blasted by cosmic rays. NASA in April launched another planet-hunting spacecraft, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess). After the Kepler space telescope, Tess is the second spacecraft which will search for planets outside our solar system, including those that could support life.

For all the latest Technology News, download Indian Express App</s>When astronomers search for exoplanets, the real goal is finding a distant world that might be within what scientists believe is the habitable zone. Those planets, which are just the right temperature to support liquid water on their surface, are thought to be our best bet for finding extraterrestrial life, but sometimes a hostile exoplanet is just as interesting. That’s the case with a newfound world called Wolf 503b.

Wolf 503b is about twice the size of Earth, but researchers can’t actually tell if it’s a hard and rocky world like our own, or a ball of gas. Whatever the case, traveling to Wolf 503b would most certainly not be comfortable due to its proximity to its star. The planet orbits its star even closer than Mercury orbits our Sun, meaning that the planet is incredibly hot.

“Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study that will better constrain its true nature,” Björn Benneke, co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It provides a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of ‘super-Earths’ and ‘sub-Neptunes’ as a whole.”

The planet, which was discovered by the Kepler space telescope, and its star are actually relatively close to Earth. They’re situated only around 145 light-years from our planet, which is a stone’s throw in the grand scheme of things. Because of that, the planet will likely be a great target for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to check out, if engineers ever actually finish building it.

With a more powerful telescope, scientists could begin to assess what the planet’s atmosphere is made out of, and determine whether or not there is water and hydrogen there. We won’t know how similar the planet is to Earth until we can observe it in greater detail, but with temperature estimates approaching 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s pretty unlikely that we’d have any chance of finding life hiding out there.</s>The most recent update explains that Kepler embarked on its 19th observation campaign on Aug. 29. It was woken from "sleep mode" but one of its thrusters exhibited "unusual behaviour". The short update also states that the the telescope's "pointing performance" may be adversely affected.

The space telescope, originally launched in March 2009, has had a tumultuous year. The team placed Kepler into hibernation in July, as their new planet-hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), began testing for its own mission. The hibernation-like state was to ensure that the data from Kepler's 18th mission, stored onboard the spacecraft, would be able to make its way back to Earth.

That data was successfully downloaded on Aug. 9, as NASA monitored Kepler's health before placing it into sleep mode on Aug. 24.

Kepler's battled before. As NASA explained in March, it has survived its fair share of potential disasters in its nine years, including being blasted by cosmic rays. Back then, NASA estimated that the fuel would run out in a matter of months -- but without a gas gauge, just how much fuel is left on Kepler is unknown. There's a chance that its 19th mission may well be its last, but the little planet-hunter that could just keeps on giving.

In total, the Kepler mission has confirmed the existence of 2,652 exoplanets and 30 of those exist within the Small Habitable Zone, the area of space surrounding a star where a planet could theoretically support a surface of liquid water (and potentially extraterrestrial life).

TESS, which takes the reins from Kepler, and will survey a far greater portion of space, began full operations in August. It has already snapped some wonderful images of the cosmos.

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Tech Enabled: CNET chronicles tech's role in providing new kinds of accessibility.</s>A new congressionally mandated report says NASA should refine its strategy and improve its tools to foster the study of exoplanetary systems and expedite the search for alien life.



The new consensus study report, authored by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, highlights several strategic priorities that, if implemented, will go a long way in ensuring that scientists have the resources they need to study exoplanets (planets in orbit around other stars). It’s called the Exoplanet Science Strategy, and it identifies specific research priorities while making recommendations on how NASA should invest its efforts.

“Over the past decade, exoplanet science has yielded many remarkable discoveries, from the direct imaging of young gas-giant exoplanets to the detection of molecules and clouds within the atmospheres of more than a hundred worlds,” write the authors in the new report. “However, our knowledge of the full range of exoplanet characteristics, and that of their local environments, remains substantially incomplete.”



Indeed, we’ve made a lot of progress in this area, but some key questions remain, such as whether our type of solar system is common or rare, how terrestrial planets form, and the factors that give rise to habitability. And of course, we still don’t know if life exists elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. The new report is a kind of nudge to get NASA on track as the National Academies looks ahead to the next 10 years of exoplanetary research.

At the broadest level, the report offers two overarching goals for exoplanetary scientists. First, astronomers and astrobiologists need to acquire an improved understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve, including better descriptions of planetary system architectures, compositions, and environments. Second, they need to learn enough about exoplanets to make informed predictions about habitability, and to make meaningful searches of alien life in distant star systems.

To that end, the researchers are recommending a “holistic” approach to the study of exoplanets and their environments, such as surveying a wide variety of planet types (including protoplanetary disks, baby planets, and star systems at the end of their lives), and finding ways to determine the mass, size, atmospheric compositions, and chemistry of distant worlds. These analyses should be done on as many exoplanets as possible, and on star systems featuring varying orbital parameters and host star types, the authors recommend.

Okay, cool. But researchers need the right tools to be able to perform this sort of work. And in that sense, NASA, and the astronomers who use its tools, have hit a sort of dead end. The Kepler Space Telescope, for example, is running out of fuel, the mission all but over.

Looking ahead to the next 10 years or more of astronomical discovery, the authors are asking NASA to develop an advanced space telescope to enable direct imaging of distant exoplanets, with a particular focus on detecting Earth-like planets in orbit around stars similar to our Sun.

In addition, NASA should invest in ground-based astronomy, the report says. Two future observatories, the Giant Magellan telescope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), will offer advances in the imaging and spectroscopy (measuring the absorption and emission of light) of entire planetary systems. These observatories will also be able to detect molecules, such as oxygen, within the atmospheres of far away planets. The GMT is currently under construction, but the TMT has yet to be approved.



But these ground-based telescopes require funding, so the authors of the new report have flagged the National Science Foundation as the government agency best suited for this task. The National Academies would like the NSF to make significant investments in both the GMT and TMT telescope, and to fund the development of add-on devices to enable specific exoplanet-hunting capabilities. NSF investments should also work to provide “all-sky access to the U.S. research community.”

The authors also want NASA to make the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) available to astronomers for the purpose of studying exoplanets. This telescope is just about ready for prime time, and once in space, it could be used to survey much more distant planets than Kepler ever could. WFIRST will allow for a more thorough census of exoplanets, and provide direct images and spectra of planets around distant stars.

The National Academies report also asks NASA to make the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the yet-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) available to a diverse group of researchers, who could then systematically collect data on exoplanets and, in the case of the JWST, survey their atmospheres.

“The identification of life on an exoplanet will not be accomplished by a single team of researchers or a single method,” write the authors. “It will happen only when we bring together the combined insights of astrophysicists, planetary scientists, Earth scientists, and heliophysicists, and provide them the opportunity and resources to collaborate.”

NASA will likely receive this congressionally mandated report with great delight. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine exists to provide independent and objective analysis and advice. Armed with these recommendations, NASA can now take this report to Congress and ask for sufficient funding.

Should NASA and Congress abide by these recommendations, the next 10 years should bear witness to some extraordinary astronomical and astrobiological discoveries.

[The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine]</s>NASA's planet finder went into sleep mode right after it finished downloading all the data from its previous campaign.

The Kepler Space Telescope is once again ready to embark on a new observation campaign, the 19th to be conducted during its current mission, reports Space.

The planet-finding telescope has recently woken up from yet another programmed slumber and is already scouring the skies in search for new exoplanets. According to NASA, Kepler began collecting data for Campaign 19 on August 29, after the veteran telescope took a short break from work to save up on fuel.

As the Inquisitr recently reported, NASA’s planet seeker was placed in a sort of “nap mode” in early July, due to concerns that its dwindling fuel reserves wouldn’t last long enough for the telescope to beam back the data gathered during Campaign 18.

After napping for four weeks, Kepler woke up on August 2 and started downloading its data to Earth soon after that — a process that was successfully completed on August 9, notes NASA’s Kepler & K2 Science Center.

The Campaign 18 data is currently available online on the telescope’s archive at MAST.

Once the data was safely transmitted back to Earth, Kepler went back to sleep, NASA announced in an August 24 update, and woke up again a few days later, ready to get its science on.

Yet the future of the veteran space telescope, which first launched in 2009, remains uncertain, notes CNET.

Although Kepler is now awake and back on duty, NASA’s expert planet finder experienced a small headache with one of its thrusters during its latest nap and might be facing some issues with its superprecise pointing ability.

“After being roused from sleep mode the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behavior exhibited by one of the thrusters. Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded,” space agency officials stated in a September 5 update.

But the space telescope’s major problem stems from its nearly depleted fuel stores. Kepler has been running low on fuel for quite a while, which is why the July time-out was specifically designed to stop the spacecraft from using any fuel until the Campaign 18 data download, the Inquisitr reported at the time.

“It remains unclear how much fuel remains,” reads the latest mission update, adding that “NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft.”

To date, Kepler has tracked down an impressive 2,652 exoplanets, with 325 of those discovered during its second mission, K2. Kick-started in 2014 after engineers figured out a way to fix a malfunction that halted the telescope’s original mission, K2 is organized in a series of observational campaigns, each one scheduled to last around 80 days.

However, the previous Kepler campaign only lasted for 51 days and was cut short on July 2, when the telescope paused science operations to go into nap mode.

Meanwhile, during Kepler’s month-long slumber, NASA officially began scouring the skies with its new-generation TESS exoplanet seeker, the Inquisitr previously reported.

While there’s no knowing how long Kepler can keep on doing what it does best, the telescope will keep astronomers busy long after its watch has ended. More than 2,700 exoplanet candidates identified by the venerable spacecraft still await to be verified and are bound to add to the total tally of the Kepler legacy.</s>All eyes these days may be on NASA’s shiny new exoplanet hunter TESS, but the group’s Kepler space telescope still has some life left in it. The aging spacecraft is one again up and running and, in a brief update to its mission log, NASA has announced that the telescope is back at work once more.

The Kepler spacecraft already has a full 18 missions under its belt, but NASA scientists are hoping that it still has enough power left to push forward. Unfortunately, the telescope is beginning to show its age, and might be somewhat hampered when maneuvering for its latest round of observations.

“The Kepler spacecraft began collecting science data on Aug. 29 for its 19th observation campaign,” NASA explains. “After being roused from sleep mode the spacecraft’s configuration has been modified due to unusual behavior exhibited by one of the thrusters. Preliminary indications are that the telescope’s pointing performance may be somewhat degraded. It remains unclear how much fuel remains; NASA continues to monitor the health and performance of the spacecraft.”

That might sound dire, but it’s somewhat expected. Kepler, which launched back in 2009, is approaching its tenth year in space. The spacecraft has a finite amount of fuel that it needs in order to maneuver and position its powerful lens at distant objects. Somewhat humorously, the spacecraft has no way of telling its handlers on the ground how much fuel it actually has left, so NASA just has to keep issuing commands until the craft poops out.

Kepler completed its previous science mission earlier this year and was placed into a hibernation state prior to booting back up to allow NASA to download the data it had retrieved. It woke in August, at which point it transferred its data to Earth, but then went back to sleep until August 29th when it woke to begin its latest round of observations.

With well over 2,000 exoplanets already discovered by Kepler, let’s hope the telescope keeps on going for a long time to come.
Wolf 503b, a super-Earth exoplanet twice the size of Earth, is discovered orbiting Wolf 503 [ru] 145 light years away by American, German, and Canadian researchers via the NASA Kepler Space Telescope.