NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope disabled

Los Angeles Times ^ | May 15, 2013, 10:13 p.m. | Amina Khan

[Olog-hai]

Planet-hunting scientists were dealt a major blow Wednesday when NASA officials announced that a crucial wheel on the Kepler space telescope had ceased to function and that the craft had been placed in safe mode.

Even as NASA officials raised the possibility that they could get the telescope back up and running, scientists began mourning the potential loss of a spacecraft that they said had fundamentally altered our understanding of alien planets in the Milky Way—and Earth’s place in an increasingly crowded galaxy.

“Tears are coming to my eyes on and off,” said UC Berkeley astrophysicist Geoff Marcy, a co-investigator on the Kepler mission. “I really think this telescope was a gift to our civilization.”

With more than 2,700 candidate planets identified and 132 confirmed since its 2009 launch, the Kepler telescope revolutionized scientists’ appreciation of the number and variety of so-called exoplanets, the bodies that orbit other stars, Marcy said. Its initial 3.5-year mission was extended last year through 2016. …

[editor-surveyor]

Honestly, its hard to tell on these Sci-Fi stretcher threads.

My apologies!

[editor-surveyor]

>> “Great. Maybe pull all the bucks out of the Muslim outreach and back towards this?” <<

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How about we pull all of the bucks out of all this dreamer foolishness, and recognize that we can’t afford this tax and spend crapola!