Kepler Space Telescope of NASA, the spaceship which has found numerous exoplanets since the time it entered in space in 2009, is into the last phase of its working. As announced by NASA, that on Friday, the staff of the spacecraft had “got an indication that the fuel tank of spacecraft is running low” and they place the spaceship in hibernation like state to download the data gathered during its recent research.
Kepler has experienced some kind of mechanical issues in 2013 in its steering system, which made the spaceship scientists to come up with an alternative intelligent plan where they utilized the pressure from the rays of sun to work as a stand-in for one its malfunctioned reaction wheels.
New version which was referred as K2, was not perfect as its previous one, and initially NASA believed that it would only able to complete 10 campaigns with left over fuel. However, it worked and makes the spaceship to observe the space portion for approximately 83 days in first run. As per NASA, the original Kepler mission found 2,244 exoplanets candidates and 2,327 exoplanets were confirmed, the extended K2 mission has successfully identified 479 candidates and out of which 323 were confirmed.
Currently, NASA is not able to find out the exact amount of fuel left in the Kepler, as it has no onboard gas measurement device. As the spaceship is in deep space region and is around 94M milers away from the orbit of earth, and there is no possibility that it will hit any life-bearing planet like icy moon, NASA is allowed to keep in the spaceship in working condition until it gives up.
As per NASA, the spaceship will be into its hibernation mode until August, and will use the Deep Space Network of NASA to send the data gathered during campaign back to Earth. And if after that the fuel remains into it, it will begin its 19th observation campaign.