NASA gives blacked-out Kepler space 'scope the kiss of life The Kepler space telescope is back in action after mysteriously shifting into emergency mode last week. "Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM)," said Charlie Sobeck, Kepler's mission manager at NASA's Ames Research Center. "On Sunday morning, the spacecraft …
"The telescope has been in operation since December 2009 and was only supposed to last for three and a half years. NASA engineers are experts at interesting hacks to keep hardware going,"
I'll say. They've pulled some good tricks over the years, but using the pressure of the solar wind definitely ranks highly in the pantheon of cunning ideas.
The engineers behind all of the remote probes that have been exploring the solar system have delivered what's got to be the greatest value for money ever seen! Even the Russian missions to Venus count as being "cheap" despite having to try several times before succeeding. I'm continually amazed at just how often these things have worked and how they've never failed to find something amazing in the most unlikely places. BZ.
They've pulled some good tricks over the years
Agreed.
but using the pressure of the solar wind definitely ranks highly in the pantheon of cunning ideas.
It was proven out by their granpappies on 1973's Mariner 10, which deliberately and actively used light pressure for attitude control. While Kepler's use of light pressure is not novel, it is still fine piece of genius because Kepler wasn't designed for that. Mariner 10 had 2 adjustable solar panels (to reduce panel temperatures near Mercury) and a steerable main communication dish that could adjust reflections for attitude control, while Kepler doesn't. (And I just noticed that Mariner 10 looks like a spacegoing Wall-E. Look at those cameras.)
Also, a nitpick: Sunlight pressure, not solar wind. Solar wind (hydrogen and helium from the sun) has about 1/10th the pressure of those slightly greasy photons Kepler is utilizing.
I've read that it's in a heliocentric earth-trailing orbit. I've also read that the moon is 0.25 million miles away from earth and that the earth is 8 light minutes from the sun and that it takes 13 minutes for NASA to communicate with Kepler (I assume that's a round trip). It really is alone out there.
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