Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA Decommissions the Kepler Space Telescope (space.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-of-an-era dept.

Late last month, NASA announced that it would be retiring the Kepler space telescope after nearly ten years of service -- double its initial mission life. Now, as Space.com reports, the planet-hunting telescope has been officially decommissioned, "beaming 'goodnight' commands to the sun-orbiting observatory." From the report: "Kepler's team disabled the safety modes that could inadvertently turn systems back on, and severed communications by shutting down the transmitters," NASA officials wrote in a statement today (Nov. 16). "Because the spacecraft is slowly spinning, the Kepler team had to carefully time the commands so that instructions would reach the spacecraft during periods of viable communication."

The final commands were sent from Kepler's operations center at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, NASA officials said. The commands got to the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network, the system of big radio dishes the space agency uses to keep in touch with its far-flung probes.

60 comments

  1. Someday by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It won’t be in my lifetime, but I hope that - some day - we really do have an honest-to-goodness deep space network.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Someday by macraig · · Score: 2

      I hope that network includes some "open" satellites with which anyone can communicate, like public webcams on the Internet now.

    2. Re:Someday by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It wonâ(TM)t be in my lifetime, but I hope that - some day - we really do have an honest-to-goodness deep space network.

      Maybe I'm just a depressing old fogie. With that intro, nope. It's just too hard to get out of the gravity well.

      Oh, we can DO it, but just barely. We've had the combustion engine moving things around horizontally for a century. We've had air-flight for "nearly" as long, and "Space Flight" (well, there ain't no air, so it's space!) for half that. We've visited the moon in person, and other planets by proxy. We've even sent two crafts into interplanetary space, outside Sol's gravity well. WHEEE!

      Going vertically is just much harder than horizontally, both equipment-wise, energy-wise, and intelligence-wise. (Any idiot can drive a car now-a-days, but back at the beginning, you had to know how to start it and crank it by hand, how to light the lights (candles!), and the correct fuel to add.) I'd be curious to see how many square feet -- meters, if you're drinking tea -- in livable space we've sent to the moon, and then just around Earth orbit. The moon/Mars isn't going to be a tourist destination anytime in the next 200 years without an energy breakthrough. Yeah, we can ship a few people someplace far away AKA Captain Cook (or was that Captain Bligh?) but for having people living in Tombstone, Arizona, Mars is unbelievable, never mind having a McD, WalM, or Micky there to visit when you're bored.

      We can maybe go get Asteroids (I loved that game when it first came out) for minerals and metal, but we're still trading energy for it. Until we can solve the energy problem (remember in the '50s when All Electric Medallion Homes were the rage? Power was going to be "Too cheap to meter" -- a prediction for a fission utopia. It'll be here Any Day Now.)

      Back in the 70s I was ready to go, excited about the moon landings and wanted us to go further. But further is a LOOONG way away, and that's just the nearest planets. We're better off Mars-forming our children's bodies instead of trying to Terraform Mars.

      Don't get me wrong -- I'd love to see us try. I'd love all of the accidental scientific and technology fallouts that occur while producing all of that. I'd like my tax money to go TOWARDS that. But unless you're a large handful of specialists, you're not going to make it out of the atmosphere, never mind our local well. Who knows, though, maybe Andy Griffith can save us.

      Oh, I'm sure we'll eventually have "an honest-to-goodness deep space network" but it'll always be machines on the far end.

      Sorry for being so negative. Maybe the younger kids, standing on the shoulders of giants, can see better. Link Or, maybe not.

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    3. Re:Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      space nerds gotta space and make everyone else pay for it

    4. Re: Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So that one day the tech for doing something now impossible will be cheap and commonplace.
      Like what happened with GPS and communications satellites.

    5. Re:Someday by quenda · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Going vertically is just much harder than horizontally,

      Actually, while orbital launch rockets start off vertical, they put most of their effort into horizontal velocity.

      Vertical is not the problem. We could easily and cheaply fly hundreds of km up if the air did not go away!
      The bigger problem though is not the height in a vacuum, but the velocity needed to not fall down again, and that velocity is parallel to the earth's surface.

      So while lack of air in space makes getting up a bit harder (rockets not jets), it makes the far bigger task of achieving orbital velocity possible. And once you are in orbit, climbing higher becomes in theory a lot easier. You can use slower but far more efficient ion-drives.

    6. Re:Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I propose new satellitecoin cryptocurrency. Every satellite you add to network gives you coins, as well as does mining. Satellite coins give you satellite time.

    7. Re: Someday by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      It'll get shut down "for recalibration" the next time the public observes an extrasolar object anomalously decelerating on its own as it enters our system, or accelerating again when leaving... but not to worry; it'll be entirely due to dust jets - even if the vectors are all wrong.

    8. Re:Someday by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Getting to orbit is remarkably cheap, except for the cost of throwing away the vehicle.

      The fuel for a Falcon 9 is about $200K per flight, compared to ~$15K per hour in fuel for a 747 airliner. 250,000 lbs max payload for a 747 vs 50,000 lbs for a Falcon 9, so let's multiply $200K by 5... but then a representative normal 747 flight may be 5 hours, so multiply $15K by 5 too. That tells us that an orbital flight costs about 13 times more per lb in fuel than a 747.

      So spaceflight need only be 13x more expensive than a typical 5 hour airplane flight, if we can stop throwing away the vehicles. That's not much at all, considering we're comparing to a mode of transport so popular that there are over a hundred thousand flights per day around the world.

      And getting anywhere beyond Earth orbit is practically free once you get past escape velocity, depending how patient you are.

      And the vacuum of space is, in some ways, a much more forgiving environment for equipment than the Earth. Sure you need some radiation hardening, but not having to worry about weather or geologic or biological processes sure helps.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    9. Re:Someday by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, we can ship a few people someplace far away AKA Captain Cook (or was that Captain Bligh?) but for having people living in Tombstone, Arizona, Mars is unbelievable, never mind having a McD, WalM, or Micky there to visit when you're bored.

      Well, even in his most generous projections of massive reuse at scale in the far future Musk said "The cost of moving to Mars ultimately could drop below $100,000" which is a bit outside my budget for a burger and it's for a one way trip. So yeah the people who expect warp drive-like bouncing around the Solar system have watched too much sci-fi. Same with the people thinking we have the capability of terraforming Mars.

      That said, getting to LEO is a lot of the effort to get into space and the difference between TLI and going to other planets even smaller. According to this chart

      Earth to LEO: 9.4 km/s
      Earth to TLI: 9.4 + 2.44 + 0.68 km/s = 12.5 km/s
      Earth to Moon: 12.5 + 0.14 + 0.68 + 1.73 = 15.1 km/s
      Earth to Mars: 12.5 + 0.09 + 0.39 + 0.67 + 0.34 + 0.4 + 0.7 + 3.8 = 18.9 km/s

      Towards Mars you can use aerobraking, which puts the rocket requirements more in the ballpark of the Moon. Granted getting off Mars again is quite a bit harder but it's not some impossible goal from a technological point of view with an Apollo 2 program and a Saturn VI. The challenge is finding some economically viable path to make it happen, but with SpaceX aiming for the third launch of a Block 5 rocket this year they've hopefully turned the corner on that and the 4th and 5th is not that far behind. And 2019 will hopefully see a crew rating of the F9 too.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    10. Re:Someday by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      We've even sent two crafts into interplanetary space, outside Sol's gravity well.

      "Interstellar", I think you meant to say, and there are four - Pioneer 10 & 11 and Voyager 1 & 2, although Voyager 1 is the only one confirmed to have passed the heliopause. New Horizons will join the bunch in 25-30 years, as will the third stage of its launch vehicle.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    11. Re: Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Came to say that... Perfect, thanks.

    12. Re:Someday by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      but the velocity needed to not fall down again, and that velocity is parallel to the earth's surface.

      Umm, no. Escape speed, in any direction other than straight at the ground, is enough to make sure you never fall down again (on Earth, if you're above terrestrial escape speed, and pointed at Jupiter...).

      Now, if you're talking sub-escape speeds, you're substantially correct....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    13. Re:Someday by GS1 · · Score: 1

      To be precise, none of our probes are outside the Sun's gravity well yet, although they may still possess enough velocity to escape it, which I haven't verified.

      The heliopause is where the Sun's solar winds stop from being dominant compared to the interstellar winds.

      The existence of Oort's cloud extending a thousand times further than the heliopause shows that there's still a long way to go before escaping the gravity well.

    14. Re:Someday by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      "The cost of moving to Mars ultimately could drop below $100,000"

      Yes, that would be a big expense for most of us, but people whose companies decide they should fly first class often spend 10% of that on a single flight. The orbit-to-anywhere part of the trip is substantially cheaper too, so if transport costs really get that low you might well bop around the solar system on business, just not so much down to the surface.

    15. Re:Someday by hierofalcon · · Score: 1

      Space elevators show promise. They've been around in Sci-Fi genre for a long time, but people are beginning to give them serious consideration.

    16. Re:Someday by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      (Any idiot can drive a car now-a-days, but back at the beginning, you had to know how to start it and crank it by hand, how to light the lights (candles!), and the correct fuel to add.)

      Not that I've ever owned a Model A or a Model T.. but my father was interested in them, and I believe in his youth owned at least one or two of them, and in his old age, had a restored Model A roadster.. but I digress. So far as I remember, not only did you have to know how (and have the physical fitness) to hand-crank the engine to start it, you also had to understand how to manually adjust the spark advance, the fuel mixture ratio, when to use the choke, and of course the 'transmission', such as it was, was a pedal on the floor (where you'd expect a clutch pedal today), and all I remember about that was that the pedal all the way up was high (3rd) gear. Yes, it took some know-how to drive back then. ;-)

    17. Re:Someday by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Anyway..

      At this point in time, my feeling is that the real obstacle to humans getting off this planet is humans themselves; we've dug ourselves a hole quite deep, what with human-caused climate change, and of course the fact that we can't even manage to get along with ourselves ("you look different than I do so I hate you", "you believe in the Invisible Sky-God different than I do, so I hate you", "you're not heterosexual, therefore I hate you", "your politics don't echo mine, therefore I hate you", and so on; no damned wonder starfaring alien civilizations won't contact us) all threaten to crash our entire civilization and send us back to the stone-age and/or cause an extinction-level event that decimates our entire species. Also add to this that even if we manage to dodge those, we don't seem capable of voluntarily controlling our own numbers, therefore population pressure will eventually cause wars over real estate and resources; clearly we need to get off this planet, but our problems are growing faster than our ability to handle them, and our technology is growing orders of magnitude faster than our ability to cope and adapt to it in positive ways. Honestly, I fear for our entire species.

    18. Re:Someday by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      I can't possibly imagine why anyone would want to leave Earth!

      That's because you have zero imagination and no ability to think beyond your next meal. A starfaring alien civilization would look at someone like you and decide you're not actually 'sentient', you're just a clever animal with lots of toys. Thankfully, however, the Bell Curve is a real thing, and not all of us are on the left side of it like you are.

    19. Re: Someday by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Are you kidding me? Any starfaring alien civilization that takes a good long look at us doesn't bother stopping by, we're currently an embarassment to truly civilized beings and not worth their trouble. If we survive another thousand years or so we might be worthy of being contacted, but now? Hell, no. We can't even get along with ourselves, let alone a truly alien species. It would be a disaster for both species.

    20. Re:Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If we get water from asteroid mining then the energy will become cheaper over time.

      Currently we have to get all our fuel from Earth, and transport whatever we use into orbit. If we can refine hydrogen and oxygen from water then we can start refueling in orbit.

    21. Re:Someday by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Who knows, though, maybe Andy Griffith can save us.

      Haha, I remember Salvage 1. Didn’t like it nearly as much as Quark , although neither one garnered much of an audience.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    22. Re:Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "So we multiply $15K times 5, and we make a deal."

    23. Re:Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have an idea, let's take a post about deep space and humanity's infinite capacity for exploration. Let's take that post and rather than discovering any of the thousands of important implications, let's resort to squabbling over politics.

    24. Re:Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Escape velocity is horizontal.

      If you are going up, even a constant rate of one millimeter per year would eventually get you into space. Not practical to do though.

      So we go up a bit, then lean over and go fast enough horizontally so that when you fall towards the earth, you continuously miss.

    25. Re:Someday by quenda · · Score: 2

      Escape speed, in any direction other than straight at the ground, is enough to make sure you never fall down again

      A rocket could fly straight up until reaching escape velocity, but that would be a very bad idea as you would be fighting gravity the whole time.
      In reality, rockets fire their engines as close to horizontal (perpendicular to gravity) as practical.

      See these diagrams of orbital transfers:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    26. Re:Someday by quenda · · Score: 1

      go fast enough horizontally so that when you fall towards the earth, you continuously miss.

      I wonder if Douglas Adams knew anything about orbital mechanics?

    27. Re:Someday by jpaine619 · · Score: 1

      space nerds gotta space and make everyone else pay for it

      Says the guy using the internet that was developed with tax payer funds..

    28. Re:Someday by jpaine619 · · Score: 1

      outside Sol's gravity well.

      No.. outside the heliopause, where the solar wind from the sun meets the galactic solar wind.. But they aren't out of the Sun's gravity well yet. That Oort cloud is orbiting something (Sol)..

    29. Re:Someday by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      I'm not 'squabbling over politics' if that's what you're implying. I think our species should place getting the hell off this planet among it's highest priorities, right up there with figuring out how to terraform other real estate in our planetary system.

    30. Re:Someday by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      What defines "out of the Sun's gravity well"? All six objects I mentioned are traveling faster than the solar escape velocity, and thus the Sun's gravitational influence is no longer sufficient to slow any of them enough to pull them into a solar orbit. Gravity doesn't just stop at a given distance, so deceleration from the Sun's gravity will continue to become smaller and smaller until they encounter something that has a greater gravitational influence than the Sun at that distance. In 20,000 years or so when Voyager 1 reaches a distance of a light-year from the Sun, it'll still be the dominant gravitational influence on the spacecraft.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    31. Re:Someday by jpaine619 · · Score: 1

      What defines "out of the Sun's gravity well"?

      Well, I'd define the Sun's gravity well as the total reach of the bending of space-time by the Sun where it is the dominant force. I'm not a astrophysicist, but that definition does seem to jive with my understanding of the various scientific definitions I've read.

      All six objects I mentioned are traveling faster than the solar escape velocity, and thus the Sun's gravitational influence is no longer sufficient to slow any of them enough to pull them into a solar orbit.

      They hit those velocities well before they passed the orbits of the outer planets. For the Voyager probes, the last planet to offer gravitational acceleration was Saturn. Thus they had hit Solar Escape Velocity before they passed the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. I suspect we both agree that Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Charon are all orbitally locked to the sun by virtue of its gravity. In fact all the probes are still being slowed by the Sun. It's still tugging at them. Thus I fail to see what the correlation of the speed of the probes in regards to them still being under the direct influence of the Sun's gravity. If they're within the orbit of objects that are locked to the Sun by gravity, I'd argue they are still within the gravity well of the Sun.

      Gravity doesn't just stop at a given distance, so deceleration from the Sun's gravity will continue to become smaller and smaller until they encounter something that has a greater gravitational influence than the Sun at that distance. In 20,000 years or so when Voyager 1 reaches a distance of a light-year from the Sun, it'll still be the dominant gravitational influence on the spacecraft.

      But will it? The reach of gravity might be nearly infinite, although at smaller and smaller levels of influence the further you away an object is, but at some point some other object becomes the dominate gravitational source in an area. We know the Kuiper Belt objects are bound to Sol by gravity.. i.e. they can't just fly off and escape without some source of external stimuli (passing rogue planet/star/body). So, I'd argue they are well within the Sun's gravity well.

      Personally, I would not have said the objects are outside of the Sun's gravity well. Astronomers don't say that. They've described the Voyagers as having passed the Heliopause.. I don't think this was accidental. i.e. I believe they use the correct term deliberately.

      If you stopped an objects motion, relative to the Sun, at a given distance will the object begin to fall towards the Sun or a different object? Personally that's where I'd draw the line, as a layman. If the object falls toward something else, then I'd say it's no longer in the Sun's gravity well.

    32. Re:Someday by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      Personally, I would not have said the objects are outside of the Sun's gravity well.

      I wouldn't have either, but I was responding to another poster that did regarding the number of missions that have reached interstellar space. I wasn't intending to make a statement regarding the Sun's gravity well. :-)

      It's been an interesting discussion, but largely academic, since Homo sapiens may very well never achieve it by any of the definitions presented thus far unless we can come up with some seriously kick-ass new methods of propulsion and/or energy storage. When Voyager 1 experiences its closest approach to Gliese 445, the Sun will be more than twice as far away (1.6 light-years vs 3.45), but because the Sun is so much more massive, it quite probably will still be the dominant gravitational force acting on it. By that time, humans as we know them now will no longer exist, having evolved into something else by then.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    33. Re: Someday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do not worry, as users we pay an extremely high price each day to use this goddamn internet

      Both money and otherwise

  2. NASA has more active deep space systems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    than most people have on their home networks, including some nerds.

    Add in the missions for partners of NASA and the communications systems can get crowded.

  3. take that, hackers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See, we destroyed it on purpose so you can't get hold of it even if you wanted!

    Sure I get the geek factor, but seriously, why did they do that? It's silly on so many levels.

    1. Re:take that, hackers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hackers could find the secret mission files embedded in a motherboard.

  4. Question by Knuckles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why go to the trouble of shutting everything down and not just leaving it as-is?

    --
    "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    1. Re:Question by Gavagai80 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Found an alternate article that explains: "The most important of these commands is to shut down Kepler's radio transmitters. Though it's in a safe orbit about 94 million mi (151 million km) from the Earth, it still poses a hazard to navigation – not in the sense that it could collide with another spacecraft, but because its radio beam could accidentally blind another probe or even the highly sensitive ground antennae of the Deep Space Network." (source)

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    2. Re:Question by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      Because the managers need to make their jobs last as long as possible.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:Question by Knuckles · · Score: 1

      Thanks

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    4. Re: Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean Trump had it poorly designed because he is a racist nazi?

      Thats how I read that explanation.

      -SJW

  5. Re:Can you find me black holes edge on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then let me rephrase it.

    When you identify objects you believe to be black holes, do you ever find ones that you think are edge on?

    I see things like NGC 4261, ... face on, but are there edge on?

  6. What is Winter Sunlight? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
    Working of Error

    1. Re:What is Winter Sunlight? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      You don't get to advertise your shitty website here for FREE, you asshole. Fuck off.

  7. Re:Waste! by lgw · · Score: 2

    All these billions to study space and there is not a single return for all the expense.

    I find it far more interesting than the billions spent on Marvel movies.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  8. Re:Can you find me black holes edge on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What?

    Could you rephrase that in a way that makes even a shred of sense?

  9. Astroarchaeology? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    I kind of wonder why it is they completely shut it down instead of just letting it continue to run?
    Also, it occurs to me: if human civilization manages (somehow) to survive long enough to move out into our planetary system, derelict hardware like Kepler, left to orbit indefinitely, will become great 'astroarchaeology' finds for later generations, brought back and restored as museum exhibits.

    1. Re:Astroarchaeology? by mhotchin · · Score: 2

      - out of manoeuvering fuel, so it can't point the radio dishes properly.
      - a fault could develop that could leave the transmitters screaming into the void, damaging or blinding other probes or earth based DSN dishes.

    2. Re:Astroarchaeology? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Ah, I should have thought of that.

    3. Re:Astroarchaeology? by Pepebuho · · Score: 1

      Why not send a probe with fuel to refuel it?

    4. Re:Astroarchaeology? by ImprovOmega · · Score: 1

      That...would cost nearly as much if not more than the original cost of the Kepler itself. Firstly, you would have to design a one of a kind refueling probe, capable of interfacing with Kepler in zero-G and in hard vaccuum (if THAT is even possible, it's not like Kepler has a gas cap or something). Secondly, you'd have to launch the darn thing, cozying up to Kepler at exactly the right speed and orientation so as not to cause a crash and destroy both crafts. Then, what do you do with the fuel probe? Would the exhaust from it occlude Kepler in some way? Or pose a risk to other craft? Way too many variables. It would be better served to just build a new Kepler instead. Plus you could take advantage of any advanced in lens making, telemetry, computing, and suchlike to get better readings out of the new model.

      Ultimately Kepler is going to be of interest primarily to future explorers and engineers who go out to examine near pristine examples of 21st century technology in the void of space.

      Or it will be cleared out like a piece of junk by some kind of space tug to make room for a brand new deep space Hilton-Taco Bell hotel franchise.