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.

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.

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: 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.