One of the three reaction wheels that are needed to keep NASA's Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft properly oriented in space seems to be failing. Engineers caution it might fail soon, and there doesn't seem to be anything they can do about it.
In that case, Kepler could not continue to function as it has, and the project team is exploring other ways to use the spacecraft. There is a backlog of data not yet thoroughly analyzed, however, so, whatever happens, Kepler discoveries will continue for a while longer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment