The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Space => Topic started by: Elderberry on November 19, 2018, 02:26:38 pm
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Lake County News 11/18/2018
On Thursday evening, NASA’s Kepler space telescope received its final set of commands to disconnect communications with Earth.
The “goodnight†commands finalize the spacecraft’s transition into retirement, which began on Oct. 30 with NASA’s announcement that Kepler had run out of fuel and could no longer conduct science.
Coincidentally, Kepler’s “goodnight†coincides with the anniversary of the death of its namesake, German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion and died 388 years ago on Nov. 15, 1630.
The final commands were sent over NASA’s Deep Space Network from Kepler’s operations center at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP, at the University of Colorado in Boulder. LASP runs the spacecraft’s operations on behalf of NASA and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado.
More: http://www.lakeconews.com/index.php/news/58840-space-news-kepler-space-telescope-bid-goodnight-with-final-set-of-commands (http://www.lakeconews.com/index.php/news/58840-space-news-kepler-space-telescope-bid-goodnight-with-final-set-of-commands)