NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Unlikely to Make a Full Recovery

Kepler, NASA's renowned planet hunting spacecraft, is unlikely to make a full recovery, according to Space.com.

"It's not going to go back to its original mission; it's going to be something less than that," the site reports Kepler deputy project manager Charlie Sobeck as saying. 

However, Sobeck adds, "how much less, and how much usefulness I'll have -- it's really still very much up in the air.

Launched in 2009, the spacecraft first ran into trouble in May when one of its reaction wheels necessary for pointing the telescope in the right direction failed. It was quickly followed by a second in July. 

At 45 million miles out, the spacecraft famous for uncovering as many as 135 confirmed planets and over 3,200 candidates is too far for some kind of repair rendezvous, NASA reports.

For this reason the space agency started remote "exploratory recovery tests" July 18 in order to determine if either wheel could be fixed.

The first wheel to get stuck and the one believed to be the more damaged of the two showed that it could spin clockwise, but not counterclockwise. The other, engineers found, responded to test commands and spun in both directions.

Despite this, all is not necessarily well with the spacecraft.

Engineers will spend the next two weeks reviewing the tests results in order to determine what steps the agency should take next in regards to their planet hunting telescope. One of the subjects of analysis is the amount of friction produced by the turning wheels.

"Kepler requires extremely precise pointing to detect the faint periodic dimming of distant starlight -- the telltale sign of a planet transiting the face of its host star," Kepler Mission Manager Roger Hunter wrote in a press release. 

Too much friction, he explained, can result in excessive vibration and thus difficulty pointing the device in the right direction.