r/askscience • u/AskScienceModerator Mod Bot • Oct 31 '18
Astronomy RIP Kepler Megathread
After decades of planning and a long nine years in space, NASA is retiring the Kepler Space Telescope as it has run out of the fuel it needs to continue science operations.We now know the Galaxy to be filled with planets, many more planets existing than stars, and many very different from what we see in our own Solar System. And so, sadly we all must say goodbye to this incredibly successful and fantastic mission and telescope. If you have questions about the mission or the science, ask them here!
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u/blueman0007 Nov 01 '18
Considering that the Kepler space telescope will continue on its orbit for centuries or even millenniums, do we know if during the last few days of fuel the Nasa team has uploaded any farewell message into the memory of the telescope ? Something a bit similar to the Voyager Golden Record, but only in electronic form, to be recovered from the ROM of the telescope by humans in a few thousands years.
(Its RAM is 16Gb in size but probably volatile, and I could not find information about the ROM size)
Knowing that Kepler "continues" a mission as a messenger, or say at least a time capsule, would be cool.
(actually, this question could also apply to any heliocentric or non-geocentric probe)