NASA has begun work to recover its Kepler satellite after the agency declared it to be in emergency mode about 36 hours prior to a communications session, Space News reported Saturday.Jeff Foust writes the emergency has disrupted science observations and the cause of the incident remains unclear.
Charlie Sobeck, Kepler mission manager, said spacecraft operators detected the emergency when they communicated with the spacecraft on April 7, according to the report.
Emergency mode means the spacecraft will gain priority access to NASA’s Deep Space Network in order to fast-track restoration of the spacecraft’s control, according to Sobeck.
Kepler is on an extended mission to study areas of the sky in an effort to find extrasolar planets and observe other astronomical phenomena, Foust reports.
