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

[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

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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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: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

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.

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.