The space telescope of NASA has found more than 2,600 worlds outside of the Solar System

After running out of fuel, will no longer do science

is The first moon out of the Solar System?

“it Is very possible that in other worlds there is life as that of the Earth”

the time Has come for the retirement for Kepler. The space telescope of NASA has run out of fuel and will no longer be able to continue searching for worlds outside of our solar system. NASA announced Tuesday at a press conference the purpose of the mission of this instrument, which during the nine years that he has been exploring our galaxy has been discovered more than 2,600 exoplanets, some of them with the necessary conditions for that, in theory, can harbor any type of life. Earlier this month, in addition, it was announced the discovery of the first exoluna : a satellite the size of Neptune orbiting a giant planet, gaseous for 8,000 light years.

A legacy that, as stated by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate director of Science at NASA, “has surpassed all expectations and has laid the groundwork for us to explore and look for life both within and outside of the Solar System”.

The withdrawal of the telescope has not been a surprise to the researchers who work with him, as he says to THE WORLD, Dimitar Sasselov, an astrophysicist at the University of Harvard and one of the scientists who helped to design the mission: “What we had hoped, due to technical issues, since the amount of fuel was limited,” says the scientist, who ensures you feel “sad and happy at the same time” before the cessation of operations of the telescope. “I am pleased by the impressive legacy of the mission. Thanks to Kepler, we now know that we live in a Universe that is rich in ports that we could call home. The fraction of Earth-like planets discovered has exceeded our expectations, even those that were more optimistic,” says the astrophysicist.

class=”icon-foto_16_g”> The telescope Kepler, in February 2009, during the tests prior to launch NASA

Among the recent discoveries made using data from Kepler highlights the estimate that between 20% and 50% of the visible stars are probably small rocky planets, similar in size to Earth located in the habitable zone of their star, that is to say, to a distance which in theory would allow you to host liquid water, well neither is too close to evaporate, or too far away to be frozen.

But the obituary of Kepler, which NASA writes this week is not closed today. As indicated by Jessie Dotson, the scientific mission at the Ames Research Center of the u.s. space agency, the end of the operations of the telescope, whose cost is estimated at 680 million dollars, does not mean the end of their discoveries. The large amount of data that has been collected over almost a decade are already in the hands of the scientists, that they are interpreting and that will keep you busy for at least another ten years.

According to Sasselov, the telescope will be now wandering through space without fuel. Who knows, asks the scientist, if “perhaps in the very distant future, humanity will be able to bring it back to display it in a museum.”

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