Written by Simone Ziggiotto, on 28/02/14
The probe Kepler discovers more than 700 new extrasolar planets, although NASA had lost hope after the failure of the telescope last year.
Kepler satellite, launched in 2009, was forced to scale back its activities in 2013 due to a fault, as announced May 15, 2013 by NASA. The problem affected a gyroscope, with the damage that has turned out to be large enough to compromise the system by pointing the telescope itself. In August following ceased his studies at NASA aimed at recovering the full functionality of the telescope, and is under evaluation ‘for potential missions’ for Kepler.
Despite this, Kepler was able to resume and continue his exploration going in search of extrasolar planets scovandone 715 even after having perused the cosmic environment surrounding 305 stars. Nearly all (95 percent) of new celestial bodies are smaller than Neptune (which is almost four times the land) and only four are a little larger than our planet. They are all located in an area conducive to life, the so-called “habitable zone”, ie in an area where planets have such a surface where liquid water can flow, the first requirement for life as we know it.
The discovery of these 715 extrasolar planets is very important, because it is a big step forward in the search for what is in the universe, where there are already 1,700 extrasolar planets known to science.
Meanwhile, NASA is close to the probe launch the James Webb Telescope, which should not go into orbit before 2018. Meanwhile, the European ESA is preparing the satellite Plato, whose purpose is to search the twin of our “blue planet”.
On August 19, 2013, NASA announced that it was impossible to repair the telescope Kepler, it would not be able to go back to being operational in the search for exoplanets. NASA, however, had expected to be able to still use the telescope for any purpose other than the search for exoplanets could potentially harbor life. We’ll see how Kepler will still be able to surprise us.
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