NASA’s Kepler planet-spotting spacecraft in ‘emergency state’

NASA scientists are scrambling to save the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft after it slipped into a state of emergency. The ageing spacecraft - which has detected almost 5,000 planets - is around 75 million miles away from Earth. Scientists discovered last week that it had at some point entered emergency mode. The emergency mode means that it is now at its “lowest operational level” and is burning through a huge amount of fuel.

Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back.

Kepler mission manager Charlie Sobeck

The future of the spacecraft - currently our best chance of finding habitable planets outside our solar system - now hangs in the balance. The NASA team overseeing Kepler says it entered emergency mode just before it began pointing it towards the centre of the Milky Way. Its original mission was completed back in 2012, during which it spotted close to 5,000 suspected exoplanets - planets which orbit a star other than the Sun. Following its success, NASA set it on a new mission called K2, which is an expanded search for other interesting astronomical objects.

Kepler emergency