Kepler Spacecraft's Planet-Hunting Days Are Over

The revolutionary planet-hunting activities of NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope have come to an end.

NASA has given up hope of restoring the Kepler spacecraft to full health and is now attempting to determine what the observatory can accomplish in its compromised state, agency officials announced today.

"We are now moving on to the next phase of Kepler's mission because that's what the data requires us to do," Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division, told reporters during a press conference today. "This is not the last you'll hear from Kepler. There's a huge amount of data collected that we'll continue to analyze." Read more...