NASA's Kepler telescope bids 'goodbye' with final commands

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NASA's planet hunting telescope
NASA's planet hunting telescope

New Delhi : NASA's popular Kepler space telescope has put itself into rest mode after getting the final commands from the Earth. The telescope has discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system and revealed that our galaxy contains more planets than stars. Here's now that it has received its final set of commands to disconnect communications with Earth. And, it’s the “goodnight” commands which finalise the spacecraft’s transition into retirement. 

Scientists at NASA has already send the final command on October 30 with the announcement that Kepler had run out of fuel and could no longer conduct science, the US space agency said in a statement.

To surprise all, Kepler’s “goodnight” falls on the same date as the 388-year anniversary of the death of its namesake, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion and passed away on November 15, 1630. 

The Kepler space telescope has remarkable impact on our understanding of the number of worlds that exist beyond our solar system.

“Through its survey, we’ve discovered there are more planets than stars in our galaxy. As a farewell to the spacecraft, we asked some of people closest to Kepler to reflect on what Kepler has meant to them and its finding of amore planets than stars,” NASA said. 

It was on March 6, 2009 that NASA launched the Kepler telescope combined cutting-edge techniques in measuring stellar brightness with the largest digital camera outfitted for outer space observations at that time. 

The telescope was actually positioned to stare continuously at 150,000 stars in one star-studded patch of the sky in the constellation Cygnus. But, Kepler took the first survey of planets in our galaxy and became NASA’s first mission to detect Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars.

Due to the end of Kepler telescope's era, scientists have launched its advanced successor, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS builds on Kepler’s foundation with fresh batches of data in its search of planets orbiting some 200,000 of the brightest and nearest stars to the Earth.