NASA says goodbye to the Planet Hunter…

Through history, human race has always tried to understand and explain life in all of its expressions, from the smallest particle, to the biggest star. Thanks to brilliant researchers such as Galileo, Kepler or Stephen Hawkins, now we can look up at sky and realize that out there, there’s an unknown world ready to be discovered called…the universe. It is one of the most intriguing mysteries which we haven’t been able to figure out, due to its vast extension that takes its limits further than what we can ever imagine. However, that hasn’t stopped us from trying, and the real proof of this, is the extraordinary Kepler Telescope.

On the year 2009, the NASA launched into space a telescope which had the initial purpose of discovering Earth-size and smaller planets in the Milky Way habitable zone, and also determining which stars those planets had. On the first four years, it got interesting data about the structure and diversity of planets, making scientists aware of the fact, that there are plenty of planets apart from the ones in the Solar System. Nevertheless, on the year 2013, it experimented a series of technical failures that led it to reboot it’s operations into a new mission concept called the “K2”. The K2 had a similar purpose than the first one, but it allowed the telescope to reach further places on the galaxy in order to expand our vision of the universe. It was expected to last from 2-3 years, however it lasted twice the expected.

Talking about numbers, the Kepler Telescope observed an approximate of 530,506 stars, documented 61 supernovae explosions, and discovered 2,662 planets. With this information, scientists published around 2,946 scientific papers and collected 678 GB of data that revolutionized the astrophysics world. In order to achieve all of this it has travelled an approximate of 94 million miles in space. However, everything that starts has an end, and for the Kepler Telescope the end has arrived.

Last Tuesday, October 30th, NASA announced the retirement of the Kepler Telescope because it had already reached its gasoline limit. It exceeded all the expectations settled by the NASA, accomplishing it’s initial purpose, but also answering dozens of questions about our existence on the universe. Certainly, it’s an awful lose of the world of science. But we should think about it as the reminder that there’s an unknown world ready to be discovered by us. So, what are we waiting for?

"A New View of Our Starry Night" NASA (2018)

Bibliography

· Strickland, Ashley. “After finding thousands of planets, NASA's Kepler mission ends” Available on: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/30/us/nasa-kepler-mission-ends/index.html

· Koren, Marina. “An Ode to the Spacecraft That Filled the Galaxy with Planets” Available on: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/kepler-nasa-exoplanets/574438/

· NASA. “Kepler By the Numbers – Mission Statistics” Available on: https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/missionstatistics

· NASA. “Mission overview” Available on: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/overview/index.html

Illustration taken from:

·NASA. "A New View of Our Starry Night" Available on: https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/starrynight