Tag Archives | planethunt

The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five small planets in very compact orbits that formed when the Milky Way galaxy was a youthful two billion years old. original

Scientists were excited to discover clear skies on a relatively small planet, about the size of Neptune, using the combined power of NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes. The view from this planet — were it possible to fly a spaceship into its gaseous layers — is illustrated at right. original

On May 28, 2013, NASA’s Kepler mission delivered new data to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. original

Following the apparent failure of reaction wheel 4, engineers were successful at transitioning the spacecraft to Point Rest State. original

At our semi-weekly contact on Tuesday, May 14, 2013, we found the Kepler spacecraft once again in safe mode. original

NASA will host a news teleconference at 4 p.m. EDT, today, May 15, to discuss the status of the agency’s Kepler Space Telescope. original

During a scheduled contact, engineers discovered Kepler was in a self-protective mode. The spacecraft returned to science data collection on May 6. original

The team recently completed a monthly science data download, marking the successful completion of Quarter 16 flight operations. original

Astronomers have discovered a pair of neighboring planets with dissimilar densities orbiting very close to each other. original

Since science operations began in May 2009, the Kepler team has released two catalogs of transiting planet candidates. original

This artist’s concept depicts an itsy bitsy planetary system – so compact, in fact, that it’s more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets. Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission and ground-based telescopes recently confirmed that the system, KOI-961, hosts the three smallest exoplanets known so far to orbit a […]

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Technicians from Ball Aerospace inspected the honeycomb structure of the Kepler Space Telescope’s primary mirror. The mirror has been 86% light-weighted; that is, it only weighs 14% of amount that a solid mirror of the same dimensions would. The mirror blank was made by Corning Glass works out of ultra-low expansion glass, or ULE. original