NASA plans to put its planet-hunting Kepler telescope back on the job. The space agency approved Kepler for a new mission after a positioning system problem sidelined the observatory last year, officials said on Friday.
According to Reuters, the telescope was launched in 2009 to search for Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars and harboring liquid water, a necessity for life.
Unfortunately, the $600 million mission was put on hold when it lost the second of four gyroscopic positioning wheels - three are needed for precision pointing.
"Good news from NASA HQ," Kepler deputy project manager Charlie Sobeck wrote in a status report posted on the Kepler website. "The two-wheel operation mode of the Kepler spacecraft ... has been approved."
NASA came up with a plan to get Kepler back on track. Mission managers are going to use solar winds to help keep the craft on course, and won approval for a new $20 million, two-year "K2" mission, according to National Geographic.
A February demonstration of the K2 mission's proposed steering plan revealed excellent stargazing accuracy and likely convinced NASA to re-launch the mission, Sobeck added.
Kepler looks for "transits" - or faint dips in light that happen when planets partially eclipse their host stars. The K2 mission begins May 30, and will mainly be hunting planets orbiting small red dwarf stars and very bright stars amenable to follow-up research from other telescopes.
"We're really excited," Sobeck, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said.
An Earth-sized planet moving around its host star as close as Earth circles the Sun would transit once every 365 days, Reuters reported. Scientists want to see at least three transits to be sure that any light dips are from a passing planet and not a stellar flare or other phenomenon.
The observations also will include star clusters, supernova and objects beyond the Milky Way.