The Wheels Come Off Kepler Planet-Finding Mission
Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - 07:30
in Astronomy & Space
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is not only the most prolific exoplanet detector ever; it is -- or was -- a marvel of engineering. Its 1.4-meter mirror funnels starlight to a 95-megapixel camera, capable of discerning dips in brightness as small as 10 parts per million -- clues to the mini-eclipses caused by an exoplanet crossing the star’s face. Yet on 14 May, the US$600-million craft was derailed by the failure of one of its only moving parts -- a roughly $200,000 device akin to a child’s gyroscope. [More]