Earlier today, we reported that NASA’s spacecraft, called the Kepler, entered emergency mode nearly 75 million miles away from Earth. Now, the space administration has announced that they’ve been able to recover the craft from EM and has gotten it to become stable once more.
Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground.
With the craft burning as little fuel as possible, NASA will be downloading data from the Kepler to assure that everything’s fine with the craft and that they can begin to explore space once more during a mission dubbed Campaign 9 which will observe planets, stars, and more using the microlensing technology aboard the craft. System boards, software reports, and history logs will all be examined over the next week to insure the Kepler is healthy enough to continue it’s journey.
The Kepler entered emergency mode on Sunday due to the maneuver and the reaction wheels getting off course in some way. This is only a possible cause which has been ruled out by the Kepler team, while the actual reason for the craft going into EM is still being examined. However, since the craft is now operational again, Charlie Sobeck, the Kepler and K2 mission manager, wanted to thank everyone who worked hard on brining the Kepler back to life alongside all the mission’s fans and followers around the world and NASA’s Deep Space Network:
It was the quick response and determination of the engineers throughout the weekend that led to the recovery. We are deeply appreciative of their efforts, and for the outpouring of support from the mission’s fans and followers from around the world. We also recognize the tremendous support from NASA’s Deep Space Network, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and to NASA’s other missions that surrendered their scheduled telemetry links in order to provide us with the resources needed to protect the Kepler spacecraft.
We’ll have updates about this story when/if they become available.
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