dailygalaxy.com wrote the following post 1 day ago:
Saving Kepler! --The Mission That Changed Our View of the Probability of Life in the Universe
The NASA mission that has changed our view of the probability of life in the Universe is in jeopardy. The Kepler has shown that planets are common throughout the Milky Way and the billions of galaxies in the cosmos. NASA officials announced Wednesday, May 15, that the Kepler space telescope – the agency's primary instrument for detecting planets beyond our solar system – had suffered a critical failure and could soon be shut down permanently.Stanford professor and former NASA official explains how NASA might revive the Kepler space telescopeS, Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics, helped guide the Kepler mission when he served as director of NASA Ames Research Center. He explains how NASA might bring the planet-hunting spacecraft back online.
The Kepler spacecraft's photo-detector array registers more than 100,000 stars at a time, Hubbard said, and in order to detect exoplanets (planets orbiting stars outside our solar system), the telescope must remain extremely steady so that the stars do not wander across the optics. A series of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels whir within the telescope to hold its gaze. At least three must be functioning to keep Kepler stable. One failed about a year ago and was shut off, and NASA scientists announced Wednesday, May 15, that a second wheel was no longer operating and that Kepler had paused operations.
In a conversation with Stanford News Service, Hubbard explained the possible ways that NASA could bring the spacecraft back online, and what planet hunters will do next if that's not possible.
It will be very sad if it can't go on any longer, but the taxpayers did get their money's worth. Kepler has, so far, detected more than 2,700 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, including many Earth-size planets that are within their star's habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form.
Kepler has done what the program managers said it would do, and that is to give us an inventory of extrasolar planets. It completed its primary observation phase, and had entered its extended science phase. We're already in the gravy train period – there's still a year and a half's worth of data in the pipeline that scientists will analyze to identify other candidate planets, and there will continue to be Kepler science discoveries for quite some time.
There are two possible ways to salvage the spacecraft. One is that they could try turning back on the reaction wheel that they shut off a year ago. It was putting metal on metal, and the friction was interfering with its operation, so you could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work.
The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability. Hubbard's impression is that it would require sending a lot more operational commands to the spacecraft.
It's important to make clear, though, that in the original queue of missions aimed at finding life elsewhere, a mission like Kepler was a survey mission to establish the statistical frequency of whether these planets are rare or common. It lived the length of its prime mission, and was extremely successful during that time at achieving this goal. It has paved the way for additional missions, such as TESS – Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – and TPF – Terrestrial Planet Finder – which will continue the search for Earth-like exoplanets in the near future.
The Daily Galaxy via Stanford University
Image credit: nexsci.caltech.edu
Related articlesNew Kepler Mission Discovery: Three Earth-size Planets in Habitable Zone
"Two Water Worlds Unlike Anything in Our Solar System" --Found Orbiting a Kepler-Mission Star
Search for alien planets in peril as wheels fall off Kepler mission
Nasa's Kepler telescope breaks down
#!/bin/bash
# post everywhere with bash, vim and curl
# I put this in my path as "socgenius"
# by tony baldwn, http://tonybaldwin.me
# released according to the Gnu Public License, v.3
source ~/.socgenius.conf
cd $fpostdir
# first, create a post/update
filedate=$(date +%m%d%y%H%M%S)
# if you did not enter text for update, the script asks for it
if [[ $(echo $*) ]]; then
ud="$*"
title="posted with socgenius"
else
# Yes. You could use "emacs", "nano", "joe", "pico", or $EDITOR,
# or, even, a gui editor, if you prefer (but why? it's a CLI tool),
# but why bother yourself with inferior editors?
$editor $filedate.fpost
ud=$(cat $filedate.fpost)
read -p "enter a title: " title
fi
read -p "Will you be crossposting? (y/n) " xpo
if [[ $xpo == y ]]; then
# now to see if you want to crosspost elsewhere
echo "For the following question regarding crossposting, please enter the number 1 for yes, and 0 for no."
echo "Would you like to crosspost to "
read -p "statusnet? " snet
read -p "twitter? " twit
read -p "facebook? " fb
read -p "dreamwidth? " dw
read -p "livejournal? " lj
read -p "tumblr? " tum
read -p "wordpress? " wp
read -p "libertree? " lt
read -p "pump.io? " pp
else
snet=0
twit=0
fb=0
dw=0
lj=0
ij=0
tum=0
wp=0
lt=0
fi
# and this is the curl command that sends the update to the server
if [[ $(curl --ssl -u $fuser:$fpass -d "status=$ud&title=$title&ljpost_enable=$lj&dwpost_enable=$dw&wppost_enable=$wp&tumblr_enable=$tum&facebook_enable=$fb&twitter_enable=$twit&statusnet_enable=$snet&libertree_enable=$lti&pumpio_enable=$pp&source=socgenius" $furl/api/statuses/update.xml | grep error) ]]; then
# what does the server say?
echo "Error friendica"
else
echo "success friendica"
fi
if [[ $(curl --ssl -u $ruser:$rpass -d "status=$ud&title=$title&channel=$chan&source=socgenius" $rurl/api/statuses/update.xml | grep error) ]]; then
echo "error red matrix"
else
echo "success red matrix"
fi
exit
read -p "Which red channel? " chan
Two months ago (??), reported today (??)
Meteor strike with moon causes massive explosionThe most powerful meteor strike on the moon ever observed has just been announced by NASA.
#!/bin/bash
# turn on logging for your friendica site
if [[ $(whoami) != root ]] ; then
echo "You must be root to run this script, bitch!"
exit
fi
read -p "Is $(pwd) the path to your friendica installation? (y/n)" ispath
if [[ $ispath = n ]]; then
read -p "Please enter the path to you friendica installation: (i.e. /var/www/friendica, leave off trailing slash)" fpath
else
fpath=$(pwd)
fi
echo "creating log directory and logs"
mkdir $fpath/log
touch $fpath/log/friendica.log
touch $fpath/log/php.log
chown www-data:www-data $fpath/log/*.log
echo "configuring logs ..."
echo "// added for php logging stuff
error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE );
ini_set('error_log','$fpath/log/php.log');
ini_set('log_errors','1');
ini_set('display_errors', '0');" >> $fpath/.htconfig.php
echo "configuring log rotation ... "
echo "$fpath/log/*.log {
daily
rotate 2
compress
notifempty
create 664 www-data www-data
postrotate
endscript
maxage 5
}" > /etc/logrotate.d/friendica
echo "The path to your friendica log, to be entered into the field at yoursite/admin/logs is $fpath/log/friendica.log"
exit#!/bin/bash
# turn on logging for your red matrix site
if [[ $(whoami) != root ]] ; then
echo "You must be root to run this script, bitch!"
exit
fi
read -p "Is $pwd the path to your red installation? (y/n)" ispath
if [[ $ispath = n ]]; then
read -p "Please enter the path to you red installation." rpath
else
rpath=$pwd
fi
echo "creating log directory and logs"
mkdir $rpath/log
touch $rpath/log/red.log
touch $rpath/log/reddb.log
touch $rpath/log/php.log
chown www-data:www-data $rpath/log/*.log
echo "configuring logs ..."
echo "// added for php logging stuff
error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE );
ini_set('error_log','$rpath/log/php.log');
ini_set('log_errors','1');
ini_set('display_errors', '0');
$a->config['system']['db_log'] = \"$rpath/log/reddb.log\";
$a->config['system']['db_loglimit'] = 0.5;" >> $rpath/.htconfig.php
echo "configuring log rotation ... "
echo "/var/www/fhvn/red/log/*.log {
daily
rotate 2
compress
notifempty
create 664 www-data www-data
postrotate
endscript
maxage 5
}" > /etc/logrotate.d/red
echo "The path to your red log, to be entered into the field at yoursite/admin/logs is $rpath/log/red.log"
exit
#!/bin/bash
# turn on logging for your red matrix site
if [[ $(whoami) != root ]] ; then
echo "You must be root to run this script, bitch!"
exit
fi
read -p "Is $(pwd) the path to your red installation? (y/n)" ispath
if [[ $ispath = n ]]; then
read -p "Please enter the path to you red installation: (i.e. /var/www/red, leave off trailing slash)" rpath
else
rpath=$(pwd)
fi
echo "creating log directory and logs"
mkdir $rpath/log
touch $rpath/log/red.log
touch $rpath/log/reddb.log
touch $rpath/log/php.log
chown www-data:www-data $rpath/log/*.log
echo "configuring logs ..."
echo "// added for php logging stuff
error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE );
ini_set('error_log','$rpath/log/php.log');
ini_set('log_errors','1');
ini_set('display_errors', '0');
$a->config['system']['db_log'] = \"$rpath/log/reddb.log\";
$a->config['system']['db_loglimit'] = 0.5;" >> $rpath/.htconfig.php
echo "configuring log rotation ... "
echo "$rpath/log/*.log {
daily
rotate 2
compress
notifempty
create 664 www-data www-data
postrotate
endscript
maxage 5
}" > /etc/logrotate.d/red
echo "The path to your red log, to be entered into the field at yoursite/admin/logs is $rpath/log/red.log"
exit
