NASA's Kepler Mission Extended For Two Years

An anonymous reader writes "A report just released from NASA's senior review panel recommends extending the Kepler mission(Pdf), initially for two years. 'Kepler is not only a unique source of exoplanet discoveries, but also an organizing and rallying point for exo-planet research. It has enabled remarkable stellar science." The scaled-down budget for the extended mission was broadly expected to include funding only for continued operations and management, with no funding for science. Astronomers have already started seeking private funding to continue their Kepler-related work, through crowd-funding websites like PetriDish and FundaGeek, as well as through the non-profit Pale Blue Dot project."

Comments

Wonderful

[MyLongNickName]

This is awesome! The longer Kepler is up, the more chance it has of finding Earth-like planets. It isn't simply a matter of probability, but the need to see three transits to get confirmation. So at least two Earth years, but often more like 3-5 years. The longer it is up, the more longer orbital period planets it will find!

I love this!

Re:Wonderful

[mattie_p]

This is awesome! The longer Kepler is up, the more chance it has of finding Earth-like planets. It isn't simply a matter of probability, but the need to see three transits to get confirmation. So at least two Earth years, but often more like 3-5 years. The longer it is up, the more longer orbital period planets it will find!

I love this!

I appreciate your optimism, but the NASA senior review panel has absolutely nothing to do with funding decisions, which are all in the hands of Congress. Unless crowd-sourcing works (which is effective for such things as Kickstarter comic book drives, but not science, last I checked), and is more effective than the white house official petition website (aka, not effective) NASA will be out of luck, sad to say.

Re:Wonderful

[honkycat]

It's not fair to say they have "absolutely nothing to do with funding decisions." A negative review can quite certainly kill a mission. A good review is something like a necessary, but not sufficient, condition, to get the funding necessary.

Re:Wonderful

[hairyfeet]

I REALLY hate to be a party pooper but....why? Frankly our engine tech hasn't really evolved since Nazis were using them to drop V2s on london so even if we find a bazillion worlds out there our pathetic tech means that even if we sent a generation ship you are talking tens of thousands of years before we could even get there, much less any chance of turning around if you find its just a big rock without the ability to sustain life.

Personally while I think its great they are keeping it going, simply because its a sunk cost and therefor wasteful to just toss it when it could be doing useful work, i think we have better uses for our limited space budgets than looking for planets a bazillion light years away. After all we have two, possibly three, places where we might find life in our very own solar system not to mention we should probably be looking ahead to when our supplies start to run low and should be mapping what resources are where for the possibility of future mining.

Like I said, really glad they are not just pulling the plug as long as its got power, but I just don't think other than using this until its used up that we should be devoting any real resources to this when we have no way to even get to our outer planets in any reasonable amount of time, much less leave the system. Hell even sending a "Is there anybody there?" message to most of these at the speed of light would be on the order of hundreds or even thousands of years.

Re:Wonderful

[Darth Snowshoe]

Twenty years ago, we knew of 9 planets. Now we can begin to do statistical analysis on families of solar systems. It's a huge affirmation of long-held suspicions that previously had no real data to support them. It's a huge boost to being able to model solar system formation. It's really useful information EVEN THOUGH you can't fly to those planets yourself and crunch around on the surface in your hiking boots. Ugh.

We can't dictate advances in propulsion technology on a schedule that's convenient for your agenda of galactic conquest. NASA is a (maybe the) major investor in breakthrough energy and propulsion technologies for spaceflight. Take a look here if you want your opinions to be clouded by some actual facts;

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac/index.html

Re:Wonderful

[hairyfeet]

Your "facts" change nothing and are nothing but an attempt to gloss over the facts. here let me spell them out, 1.-you have a VERY limited budget for space, 2.-You have two, possibly three planets in our own solar system where life might be found, 3.- There are a lot of resources out there that could be VERY useful to the human race in the near future.

So give us ONE reason, just one mind you, as to why your statistical analysis should take precedent over these things much nearer to earth, that we can actually reach in our lifetimes?

Hell if we had unlimited budgets i'd say go for it, hell personally i'd kill off half the crap the military blows cash on and build our entire economy on space and high tech, but sadly that ain't reality. reality is NASA has a VERY limited budget with which to work and frankly your pet project has VERY little use outside number crunching. Sorry friend but we have to prioritize our spending and other space projects need it more than you and can produce results we can use.

But it's too expens--OW

[Cazekiel]

Just like SETI, it always ticks me off when space and science projects are shelved because "it costs too much".

The cost to run SETI a year = one army fighter plane
50 years of NASA = the bank-bailout

I've shut people up who say "the space program costs too much!" with those two facts alone. It'd be nice if we did spend too much on astronomy and science. "Sorry Mr. President, we can't go to war with (insert country with oil or other resources we want control of). We decided to spend money on cool shit that's gonna expand our feeble minds for once."

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[ThePeices]

Uhm...there are no army fighter planes...fighter aircraft only exist in the airforce and naval services...

Does anybody really care?

Do you realise that what you pointed out adds absolutely nothing to the whole point he was making?

It is obvious you did it just to find something to moan about. TBH, its pretty sad when you're doing it over something so piteously irrelevant as a minor grammar error.

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[Darth_brooks]

There's a fine line between "these pedantic assholes who get off on correcting people" and people who disagree with you and are therefore wrong.

Grandparent has a decent point, but the fact that he whiffed on several key points detracts from his argument. No, the army doesn't have fighters. Also, No, the president can't declare war. You might call it a pendantic asshole point when I say that we haven't gone to "war" in 70 years. But, calling every military action a "war" is incorrect. Just as the president using the military as his personal pop-gun squad without the approval of the people (or more accurately, their elected representatives.) is incorrect. It's not that hard to double check something, especially here on ye olde intertubes. Doing so kinda fits with that whole "Do it right the first time" ethic that has died off in society these days.

If you want to make your point heard, don't run around screaming half-assed, half remembered sound bites. Make a simple, well thought out, perhaps even slightly researched point. It's harder to refute. You also find out interesting things like the fact that it costs a mere $2.5 million dollars per year to run the Allen Seti array (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/10/success-seti-array-back-on-track/), and that the government accounting office was estimating a cost of $412 million per unit for the F-22 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor#Production_and_procurement). So you could run the array for about 165 years on the cost of "one army fighter." 165 years vs. 1 year? Gosh, that argument just gained some interesting new perspective, and I did it without sounding like your drunk uncle who spent thanksgiving bleating out Rush Limbaugh's fascinating rhetoric and explaining how liberals are ruining the country.

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[Cazekiel]

There's a fine line between "these pedantic assholes who get off on correcting people" and people who disagree with you and are therefore wrong.

During SETI's time when it was shut down, that's as much as it'd cost. I didn't say F-22, that's getting extremely specific, and it goes by today's standards; if I say "my house is worth as much as a car" (which in some cases, it is; a POS trailer built in the 60s when electricians got their licenses from a 7-11, apparently), for you to assume that it's the cost of an Audi as compared to a Hyundai isn't my fault. The statement is true, it just needs more specifics, as in which model, new/used, etc.

So when it comes to the aircraft-comparison, I'd tell you to consult Sagan on which aircraft he'd meant, as it's his statement altogether, not mine. I mean, he's dead, but still; I can't remember which addendum to which 'Cosmos' episode it was in which he says that, but I can look it up. So the formula (circa 1993, the time period when SETI was canceled, which model Sagan spoke of) as it relates to my statement isn't based on your F-22 argument. That wasn't during Carl's time, nor the time SETI was taken down. So perhaps I should have added that as HIS factoid to make it clear that we weren't talking about today's standards.

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[Patch86]

You might call it a pendantic asshole point when I say that we haven't gone to "war" in 70 years. But, calling every military action a "war" is incorrect. Just as the president using the military as his personal pop-gun squad without the approval of the people (or more accurately, their elected representatives.) is incorrect.

What a ridiculous thing to say. War is an English word with a commonly accepted meaning, i.e.:

war (wôr)
n.
1.
a. A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.

The Iraq War was a war. The Vietnam War was a war. The Afghanistan War is a war. They're all called wars in natural English language, and they all meet the criteria. Sending 100,000 troops into a sovereign nation with the express purpose of toppling their government and replacing it with one friendly to your cause is a war in as classic a sense as you can get.

Whether the White House has found some legal loop hole that allows them to avoid doing what the constitution says they have to do to go to war doesn't have any relevance. If the Attorney General found a way of classifying Afghanistan as a Charity Bake Sale it still wouldn't make it one; it would just mean that the legal code has more holes than Swiss cheese.

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[Kjella]

+1 to everything you said, I wish I had mod points. Ask the Iraqis or the Vietnamese or the Afghans if they were in a war and I think you'd see unanimous agreement. Maybe not a war that threatens US territory or require any wartime means within US borders, but obviously a war. Even the President agrees with this, here's a few quotes from his Nobel Prize speech:

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. (...) Still, we are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.

Invading foreign countries in an act of war, and action speaks louder than words. It is a war whether Congress signs off on it or not, I think the GP is the only one to "resolve" this constitutional issue by concluding that since no war is declared there can't be a war.

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[Squidlips]

NASA has plenty of money but it is being funneled to the Pork in Houston to be squandered on manned spaceflights while real science flounders....

Re:But it's too expens--OW

[Sigg3.net]

The old saying goes: it looks like armrd conflict, it walks like armed conflict, it quacks like armed conflict. It probably is a war.

But then we'd have to give War on Terror (1984), War on Drugs, War on Full-Frontal Nudity aso. a new set of names. Like domestic policy.

Americans use war like arabs use jihad. Populisticly.

Kepler's produced great stuff

[__aaltlg1547]

But I think already we have the important data: thousands of planets! And these are just that tiny fraction that have orbits that take them across the line between their sun and ours. Thousands of times as many planets have orbits that would not cause a transit.

The point is we now have enough data to estimate the density of planets in the galaxy. So you could say the basic goals of Kepler have been accomplished and the rest is gravy.

Re: Kepler's produced great stuff

[poly_pusher]

We do have enough data. That is until we find something so outlandish that we need more data... It's a very sophisticated piece of equipment that is already in space. Considering how successful it's been, if we can continue to use it without having to send a manned mission to fix it, then we should just keep it operational as long as possible.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[mendelrat]

But I think already we have the important data: thousands of planets! And these are just that tiny fraction that have orbits that take them across the line between their sun and ours. Thousands of times as many planets have orbits that would not cause a transit.

The point is we now have enough data to estimate the density of planets in the galaxy. So you could say the basic goals of Kepler have been accomplished and the rest is gravy.

The Review panel agrees with you, and even goes further to politely tap the Kepler science team on the bottom and to try to point them in the right direction. Looking at the "Proposal Weaknesses" section (emphasis is my addition):

Since masses cannot be determined, Kepler can only directly measure an upper limit to [the frequency of Earth-like planets]. The proposal over-emphasizes the capability of Kepler to directly determine [the frequency of Earth-like planets] as compared to the contribution of Kepler determination of exoplanet statistics. The strong focus of the proposal on the detection of a few (e.g. 0 – 20) “Earth-like” bodies leaves the plan subject to criticism for the very high dollar cost of a few new objects, few or none of which can be followed up for mass characterization through Doppler shift measurements.

So basically they are telling the Kepler science team (rightly so) to pipe down about the Earth-like planets we can't do any more science with at this time and instead talk about the amazing stuff they can do with the statistics they've gathered. This is not even talking about what else can be done with these data; Kepler is an outstanding stellar astrophysics mission.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. The goal of Kepler was to find Earth-like planets in the habitable zone and we don't have any confirmed planets of that type yet. Turns out that the stars in general are a lot noisier than our own so we need a few more years to beat down the noise.

This was good news for Kepler!

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[queazocotal]

Not quite.
Kepler was designed to detect earth-like planets.
It does this by detecting the dimming of the star when a planet passes in front of it.
Unfortunately, the sun has turned out to not be very typical.
Most stars are much more flickery than the sun - which we diddn't realise until Kepler.

This means that it's quite hard to pick up an earth-like planet in an earth-like orbit crossing the star.
Both larger planets - they obscure more of the star, so are more visible, and closer in - they orbit much more rapidly, so you can add up the crossings) are significantly easier to detect.

The extended mission would get Kepler about to its initial mission goals - in the face of stars turning out to be more twinkly than expected.
Detecting reliably earth-like planets around candidate stars.

It will coincidentally allow the detection of more very distant large planets, and close-in very small planets.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[Spinalcold]

I'd like a link. because you can predict, to a degree of error masses. hell Pluto was proposed because of how well we can calculate gravity. by just taking the mass of the star and the periodicity we calculate its mass to a relatively small degree of error.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[Teancum]

So you could say the basic goals of Kepler have been accomplished and the rest is gravy.

It may be gravy, but it is very delicious gravy that is very difficult to get any other way. The ongoing science that Kepler is doing right now is amazing, and some of the stars they are monitoring right now need to have observations that last several years for some of the most revealing data to come forth. Some of that involves how Kepler is acquiring that data in the first place.

What is happening here is that this device is looking for transits of planets across the disc of the star being observed. For very close planets, that can be just a few days... but even here in our own Solar System we know of several planets including the one that I'm typing this message on which takes a fair bit longer for it to orbit around its "parent star". I think it would be at a minimum to in theory be able to detect our own Solar System and its planets presuming that the orientation would be appropriate for this kind of survey... which requires years of observations to detect such a transit.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we found a G-class star that had a planet with an orbital period of somewhat close to a year? That is the kind of thing we can expect to get from this expanded mission and is not something which can be said to come from the current data set.

Another issue is that because of bandwidth issues, a considerable portion of the data process needs to happen on the computer inside of Kepler... which is really where the professional astronomers come into question. They need to be able to establish the criteria for what data is sent for review and what data can simply be discarded as "lacking interest". This is an ongoing review of the data obtained, thus something which really needs continued funding. Perhaps private funding could extend the team of astronomers who could perform these kind of calculations, but ultimately it is government programs which need to sustained for a considerable period of time once a commitment is done to perform a task like this.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[Teancum]

If you had a system with multiple planets, you might get some rough estimates on masses if you knew the distance from the star and orbital periods. But the reason we can pin down solar system planet's masses so well is because we can observe their location at nearly all points in their orbit to great precision, and can see stuff like the precession of orbits. Just having transit times isn't going to give you anywhere near that kind of information to work with.

I would give astrophysicists a whole lot more credit for really understanding Newton's laws of motion or even General Relativity so far as how it applies to the motion of stars and planets. The information you can obtain from the stellar data coming from Kepler is a bit more involved than just transit times, and you can tell quite a bit in terms of the masses of other planets if you notice that some planet is "early" or "late" achieving a transit across the parent star. There is a suggestion that "moons (like the Earth's Moon) might even be detectable using the methods they are using right now.... which would make estimating planetary mass to be trivial by comparison.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[mendelrat]

Kepler observes transits of planets. For simplicity's sake, let's just talk about one planet. As the planet passes in front of the star, the shape of the light curve tells you the ratio of the radii of the planet and the star, and some good constraints on the inclination of the system; that's it. If you make some assumptions about the underlying star, you can make a good estimate for the radius of the star and then get the radius of the planet. As AC points out, if you assume a density, you can get a "mass" measurement. That's like asking someone on the internet how tall they are and guessing their weight from it; it can get you an ok answer, but the real range of variation is tremendous and interesting.

In order to then get a real, measured mass of the planet, you need radial velocity measurements which tells you the ratio of the mass of the planet and the star. Again, if you know some things about the star, you can then make a good estimate for it's mass and then get the mass of the planet. NASA buys a share of time from the Keck telescopes, and the vast majority of time has been eaten up by followup observations of Kepler candidates ever since it launched. For the smallest planets, you need precision on a scale that most observatories can not provide at this time; for an Earth-like planet around an Earth-like star the radial velocity precision required is on the order of cm/s, which is fantastically hard to do. I'm not actually sure anyone has produced anything real along those lines, though there are plenty of ideas and plans.

If you're technically minded, there's a decent review from a few years ago available. If you're looking for something simpler, try this.

As Teancum points out, you can detect and infer some other stuff by looking at the variations of the transit times and see if there is something else tugging on the system; that's a whole different ballgame, and David Kipping is the most prominent person I can think of leading that charge.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[AstroMatt]

"The Sun is not a solar-type star" was my favorite quote from the 1st NASA Kepler Conference held Dec 2011!

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[queazocotal]

Mine too!
I strongly recommend watching the Kepler conference.
http://keplergo.arc.nasa.gov/ScienceKepSciCon1.shtml

This is awesome!

You need some science background - if you don't know what a harmonic is, or a power spectra - you'll be pretty lost.

But as it's a new field, I was able to keep up with about 80% of the content, even though I only have a couple of semesters of physics under my belt, and a very limited understanding of the maths.

Re:Kepler's produced great stuff

[Spinalcold]

thanks a lot, as a physics fanatic just going into university that's some stuff I will comb over. I had assumed that most of these discoveries were done by Kepler alone, not by follow up surveys but other telescopes. On second thought, that was a bit naive of me.

Re: Kepler's produced great stuff

[__aaltlg1547]

I agree with that, and that's what NASA's fixin' ta do.

kickstarter for a space probe?

[decora]

man, i am with you 100%. but lets think about it, what do those two things have in common? war and bailouts? it is the government wasting our money because our corrupt politicians take 'campaign contributions' (bribes) from companies and hedge funders, and then they decide the government budget that will benefit those 'investors' that profit from war and from bailouts.

we are just going to have to start funding this stuff ourselves. imagine all the school kids who are still idealistic about this stuff. i know i was when i was in the 6th grade. imagine if each one of them across the world could raise $1 and some how funnel it through the internet a la a crowdfunding thing like kickstarter. i mean if i could spend a $1 to help a space probe, i would have done it.

maybe we can just evolve that model a little bit? and then we can tell the government to go @#$ itself.

Re:kickstarter for a space probe?

[malilo]

Ding ding ding! Here is the infographic version of the above comment: http://www.republicreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ROI-1024x460.jpg

Re:kickstarter for a space probe?

[steelfood]

And everybody wonders why the government is inept and the country bankrupt.

Re:kickstarter for a space probe?

[Lotana]

That is a very informative chart. Thank you for posting it.

*might* be extended.

[oneiros27]

"senior review panel recommends" does not mean "Congress has approved".

Until there's a budget passed, senior reviews mean nothing. And if Congress puts in enough mandates on NASA's plate without increasing the budget, something's gotta get cut.

If the budget's cut, are they going to give up on the JWST, or Kepler and dozens of other smaller projects that are returning results now? Are they going to grab money from earth science, heliophysics, the manned space program, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't think it's a good time to be in astronomy at NASA.

Re:*might* be extended.

[Anonymous Coward]

"senior review panel recommends" does not mean "Congress has approved".

Until there's a budget passed, senior reviews mean nothing. And if Congress puts in enough mandates on NASA's plate without increasing the budget, something's gotta get cut.

If the budget's cut, are they going to give up on the JWST, or Kepler and dozens of other smaller projects that are returning results now? Are they going to grab money from earth science, heliophysics, the manned space program, or somewhere else? Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't think it's a good time to be in astronomy at NASA.

It's not a good time to be in astronomy in general. I know, I left the field because of the few jobs available...

Re:*might* be extended.

[Teancum]

Until there's a budget passed, senior reviews mean nothing. And if Congress puts in enough mandates on NASA's plate without increasing the budget, something's gotta get cut.

If the budget's cut, are they going to give up on the JWST, or Kepler and dozens of other smaller projects that are returning results now?

There are just two significant programs NASA is working on: The SLS and JWST. Almost the entire rest of NASA is being cut to support both programs.... that in my own opinion neither one of these projects are ever going to actually work much less worry about getting much else accomplished.

Re:*might* be extended.

[necro81]

Until there's a budget passed, senior reviews mean nothing

Given the experience of the last few years, I won't be holding my breath - Congress hasn't passed an actual budget, worthy of the name, on time, since 2009.

it just needs to work a little bit longer

[Gravis Zero]

... and then we'll bring it home for doing a good job. we promise.

so much more work to be done

[techfun89]

This is good news that it will go on. There is more work that can be done and many more discoveries. The data it has provided will prove useful in more advanced telescopes and instruments in the near future.

:Adopt a Star...

[BTWR]

as well as through the non-profit Pale Blue Dot project.

Ugh. I simply cannot stand star "adoption."

Re::Adopt a Star...

[BTWR]

Actually, now that I see it in writing, adoption is ok for the cause. Sorta like Adopt-a-Highway or Adopt-a-Whale. It's support, now ownership.

Now, to be clear - it's "Name a Star" crap that they sell on the radio near Valentine's Day that I hate. And they'll even put it into an "International Registry!"