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The Kepler Space telescope has entered Emergency Mode


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I can only assume the reporter who wrote that article is not a native English speaker. Man, web news content needs to realize that copy editors are a good thing.

Without specifics of the actual problem they are having, it's hard to say what the prognosis is.

Edited by tater
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3 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Well... crap :(

http://www.pulseheadlines.com/kepler-spacecraft-emergency-mode/25097/

 

Do you guys think Kepler will pull itself out of this one?

I Think they knew this would a have happened sooner or later, it was  hobbling around on one leg  for the last few years, so I would say its a miracle it has lasted this long.

Not to fear, hubble is still there and JWST is on its way soon.

 

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2 hours ago, SgtSomeone said:

"75 million miles away" What orbit is it in? At one of the lagrange points? Here's hoping it pulls itself out! 

Kepler orbits the Sun...With an orbital period of 372.5 days, Kepler slowly falls further behind Earth.

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2 hours ago, Camacha said:

I am not sure what to make of this fuel consumption story.

 Same here. They haven't done a good job of explaining what "emergency mode" is or why it would consume fuel. This is kinda central to the whole story.

 

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2 hours ago, Camacha said:

I am not sure what to make of this fuel consumption story.

 

5 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

 Same here. They haven't done a good job of explaining what "emergency mode" is or why it would consume fuel. This is kinda central to the whole story.

 

Its not explained in the story very well, but the probe lost a few of its gyroscopes it was using for stability. My best guess would be that it lost another one and is now using its thrusters to maintain attitude thus raising the fuel consumption from nothing to something.

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It looks like all the news sources are just floating the original press release.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-spacecraft-in-emergency-mode

I figure either Charlie Sobeck doesn't know what any of this means himself, or else he forgot that nobody outside of the project would be familiar with "emergency mode".

 Either way, I guess all we can do is wait for more concrete info.

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43 minutes ago, Exploro said:

I think the "Emergency Mode" is the "Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode" as discussed in "Spacecraft Hybrid Control At NASA: A Look Back, Current Initiatives, & Some Future Considerations" pg 17.

 Excellent find!

 If that's the case, then either it's lost another reaction wheel or it *thinks* it's lost another reaction wheel.

Best,
-Slashy

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3 hours ago, Frybert said:

 

Its not explained in the story very well, but the probe lost a few of its gyroscopes it was using for stability. My best guess would be that it lost another one and is now using its thrusters to maintain attitude thus raising the fuel consumption from nothing to something.

That is probably right, iirc after two years they lost a couple. This tells us that the stabilization equipment was of not robust design. Of course its already behind its designed liftime, and basically limping for the last five years.

These telescopes need a service or replacement program, until we can get things that last 100 years (even solar panels lose about half their power in 50 years), we need tonhave a replacement program; the big one will be hubble, when that finally goes there will be a huge gap in our light telescopic capability. We have now no ability to repair or replace. By definition it would be a not like-kind replacement, unless a shuttle comparable comes about, even so no upgrade or repair capability. JWSt is great, but its really far into IR. 

Imagine that the graviton hunters find evidence of two black holes merging close by, or a supernova about to blow, you want to view from all spectra, but the hubble is no longer there. 

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9 hours ago, PB666 said:

I Think they knew this would a have happened sooner or later, it was  hobbling around on one leg  for the last few years, so I would say its a miracle it has lasted this long.

Not to fear, hubble is still there and JWST is on its way soon.

 

There are numerous replacements for Kepler on the way.

NASA's is the TESS satellite, which is smaller and less capable than Kepler, but also more modern and optimized after the lessons from Kepler.

http://www.space.com/20943-alien-planet-search-new-missions.html

3 hours ago, YNM said:

Hopefully they don't lost the last reaction wheel... That'd practically marks the end of the mission.

They had 2 left.

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

That is probably right, iirc after two years they lost a couple. This tells us that the stabilization equipment was of not robust design. Of course its already behind its designed liftime, and basically limping for the last five years.

These telescopes need a service or replacement program, until we can get things that last 100 years (even solar panels lose about half their power in 50 years), we need tonhave a replacement program; the big one will be hubble, when that finally goes there will be a huge gap in our light telescopic capability. We have now no ability to repair or replace. By definition it would be a not like-kind replacement, unless a shuttle comparable comes about, even so no upgrade or repair capability. JWSt is great, but its really far into IR. 

Imagine that the graviton hunters find evidence of two black holes merging close by, or a supernova about to blow, you want to view from all spectra, but the hubble is no longer there. 

There are plenty of telescopes in all types of spectra, just not as big as Hubble. Hubble is old anyways.

Orion (plus a airlock module and unpressurized cargo module based off the Dragon, or a lunar orbital station resupply vehicle) might be able to do telesope repair, these days most big and important telescopes are in Lagrange points that can only be accessed by men via Orion/SLS. Not to mention it's probably the only way to fund a repair mission (either that, or a commercial repair vehicle based off OrbitalATK's satellite lifetime extension spacecraft http://spacenews.com/orbital-atk-believes-in-satellite-servicing-but-not-in-rocket-reusability/.) And yes, before you say JWST is not designed for servicing, I know, but the Hubble also had major replacements of components never meant to be serviced.

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1 hour ago, PB666 said:

That is probably right, iirc after two years they lost a couple. This tells us that the stabilization equipment was of not robust design. Of course its already behind its designed liftime, and basically limping for the last five years.

CMGs are typically among the most common failure points of these missions because they have constantly moving parts and lubricants along with thermal and weight requirements. It's not easy to design stuff that works in space.

Edited by Nibb31
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@ YumonStudios : thought there's only one ? The photon pressure of the solar panel keeps it from rolling and changing orientation in orbital plane azimuth, while one keeps the orbital plane altitude orientation. Then the thrusters is used once every month to change orientation in orbital plane azimuth.

Edited by YNM
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5 hours ago, YumonStudios said:

There are numerous replacements for Kepler on the way.

NASA's is the TESS satellite, which is smaller and less capable than Kepler, but also more modern and optimized after the lessons from Kepler.

http://www.space.com/20943-alien-planet-search-new-missions.html

They had 2 left.

There are plenty of telescopes in all types of spectra, just not as big as Hubble. Hubble is old anyways.

Orion (plus a airlock module and unpressurized cargo module based off the Dragon, or a lunar orbital station resupply vehicle) might be able to do telesope repair, these days most big and important telescopes are in Lagrange points that can only be accessed by men via Orion/SLS. Not to mention it's probably the only way to fund a repair mission (either that, or a commercial repair vehicle based off OrbitalATK's satellite lifetime extension spacecraft http://spacenews.com/orbital-atk-believes-in-satellite-servicing-but-not-in-rocket-reusability/.) And yes, before you say JWST is not designed for servicing, I know, but the Hubble also had major replacements of components never meant to be serviced.

But that just shows the point, because it had a lifetime service capability, it was possible to think outside the box when it came to repair and later upgrades. Hubble is old, there is no doubt about that, but lagrangian L2 is used by these new scopes because a particukar attribute, they need to stay as cool and uniformly insolated as poosible, iirc, JWSt needs its detector at 7'k. But the problem is that to do that they have built a highly complex recycling system that will add another weak point to the machines lifetime. The other thing, JWST is not up, hope everything works well, but this is space.

It does not need to be humans, if the gyros can be modularized into the designs you could send a service moduke wit a robot to L2 that does scheduled replacements, and in the case if keplar, helium replacement. Technically ion drives can get you from LEO to L2 provide you a small amount of chemical rocket to fire a a couple of points. Here's the bottom line, the most productive scientific feature of our space program is the long distance observation capability, no single instrument suffices anymore for complete observations. It is great we have ground instuments that can help, but because of hubble they have gotten better. The entire spectrum runs from radiowave to ultragamma, includes the cosmic ray observatories, and a growing team of neutrino observatories here on Earth, there are times you want many of these capabilities on the same objects. As a consequence you need redundancy in these systems. You want overlapping capabilites. you could argue that, 25 years ago, hubble was an expensive mistake, it has in fact been the most successful science gathering mission, we have to think about its cost versus how many man hours spent on Earth pouring over its data, which will continue long after its dead. If we think about these scopes this way, it is obvious we need more. 

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