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NASA's Kepler Planet-Hunting Space Telescope Wakes Up Again
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | October 13, 2018 08:19am ET
The Kepler wake-up whipsaw continues.
NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,650 alien planets to date, emerged from yet another slumber Thursday (Oct. 11), agency officials said.
Kepler has been running very low on fuel for a while now. So, mission team members have put the spacecraft to sleep multiple times over the past few months in an effort to ensure there's enough propellant left for Kepler to orient toward Earth and beam its latest batches of data home. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]
Such relays are only possible during certain windows. The Kepler team relies on NASA's Deep Space Network to catch the incoming data and must share this system of big radio dishes with other agency missions.
More:
https://www.space.com/42127-nasa-kepler-exoplanet-telescope-awake-again.html?utm_source=notification
