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With Fuel Exhausted, NASA Retires Kepler Telescope (space.com)
ewhac writes: NASA today announced that it is retiring the Kepler telescope after nearly ten years of service -- double its initial mission life. In that time, Kepler discovered over 2,600 exoplanets, most of which are between the size of Earth and Neptune, sparking an entirely new field of astronomical research, and revealing for the first time just how common exo-planetary systems are. With its fuel supply exhausted, Kepler is no longer able to maneuver or reorient itself to make observations. NASA has elected to decommission the spacecraft and leave it in its current, safe orbit away from Earth.
With "its fuel supply exhausted", NASA has "elected to [...] leave it in its current, safe orbit". If you have only one option, seems to me there is not much electing to be done ...
A DSV-1 with suitable payload could get there.
At great cost with money that should go for the next generation of spacecraft.
Look, Kepler served its purpose. It confirmed over a thousand exo-planets, and thousands more unconfirmed. It is not particularly useful to find a few hundred or even a thousand more. Kepler has been in space for 10 years, and was built with tech even older than that. It is time to move on.
We need a NEW spacecraft that can detect smaller planets, planets further from their star, and even exo-moons. We need to be able to look for spectroscopic signs of O2 in star-crossing exo-planets, which may mean life. Spending $500M on a refueling mission will accomplish none of this.