Kepler space telescope
NASA space telescope for exoplanetology
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| November 15 2018 | The Kepler space telescope was deactivated with a 'goodnight' command sent from the mission's control center at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, coinciding with the 388th anniversary of Johannes Kepler's death. |
| October 30 2018 | NASA announced the spacecraft was out of fuel and its mission was officially ended. |
| August 2018 | NASA roused the spacecraft from sleep mode and began collecting scientific data for the 19th observation campaign. |
| June 2016 | NASA announced a K2 mission extension of three additional years. |
| May 10 2016 | NASA verified 1,284 new exoplanets found by Kepler, the single largest finding of planets to date. |
| April 7 2016 | Kepler was found operating in emergency mode, triggering a spacecraft emergency. |
| January 6 2015 | NASA announced the 1,000th confirmed exoplanet discovered by the Kepler space telescope, including four planets orbiting within habitable zones. |
| December 18 2014 | NASA announced the K2 mission detected its first confirmed exoplanet, a super-Earth named HIP 116454 b. |
| May 2014 | Kepler collected data from Field 0 as a testing run for the K2 mission. |
| May 16 2014 | NASA approved extending the Kepler mission to the K2 mission. |
| November 18 2013 | The K2 'Second Light' proposal was reported, suggesting utilizing the disabled Kepler to detect habitable planets around smaller, dimmer red dwarfs. |
| August 15 2013 | NASA announced Kepler would not continue searching for planets using the transit method due to unresolvable reaction wheel issues. |
| May 11 2013 | A second reaction wheel (wheel 4) failed, jeopardizing the continuation of the planet-hunting mission. |
| May 11 2013 | A second reaction wheel failed, disabling the collection of science data and threatening the continuation of the mission. |
| November 14 2012 | NASA announced the completion of Kepler's primary mission and the beginning of its extended mission. |
| July 14 2012 | One of the four reaction wheels used for spacecraft pointing stopped turning, potentially compromising the mission's ability to continue. |
| April 2012 | An independent panel of NASA scientists recommended continuing the Kepler mission through 2016 to achieve its scientific goals. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Kepler space telescope, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.