

Astrobiologists also use this data to develop new techniques for studying exoplanets in greater and greater detail. Numerous researchers supported by the Astrobiology Program are working with data from Kepler to discover potentially habitable exoplanets.
Kepler telescope nasa archive#
Kepler’s current count of confirmed exoplanets and planet candidates can be found in the NASA Exoplanet Archive at: The vast amount of data collected by Kepler will continued to be analyzed by researchers in the years to come, providing further discoveries that will help to guide the future direction of astrobiology science. Amongst the Kepler discoveries is Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star other than the Sun. Such observations are directly relevant to the study of life’s potential in the Universe, and the search for life beyond Earth.īy October 2018, and after nine years in deep space collecting data, Kepler had discovered more than 2,600 planets outside our solar system. Kepler searched for Earth-sized planets that orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Kepler left a legacy of more than 2,600 exoplanet discoveries.

On October 30, 2018, NASA announced that Kepler had run out of fuel and was being retired within its safe orbit, away from Earth. However, all other Kepler assets remained intact and were used for extended observations, and dubbed the K2 mission.

Kepler lost a second spacecraft reaction wheel in May of 2013, which effectively ended data collection in the original Kepler field after 4 years of continuous monitoring. An important part of Kepler’s work was the identification of Earth-size planets around distant stars. The Kepler Mission was a space observatory designed to survey a specific portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy.
