NASA's Kepler Telescope's Alien Planet-Hunting Mission May be Over -- Or is It?

NASA's Kepler telescope has been hunting for alien planets since 2009. Now, though, the instrument's mission may be over. NASA has announced that the telescope is broken, which potentially jeopardizes the search for other worlds where life could exist.

Kepler is a specially designed, three-foot diameter telescope called a photometer, or light meter. It has a very large field of view for an astronomical telescope, which allows it to observe the necessary large number of stars. So far, the telescope has collected a substantial amount of data, revealing unknown planets in distant galaxies. In total, Kepler has confirmed 132 planets and spotted more than 2,700 potential ones, according to the Huffington Post.

Unfortunately for future research, though, Kepler has had a malfunction. The second of Kepler's four reaction wheels--devices that allow the observatory to maintain its position in space--has failed. This deprives Kepler of the ability to lock precisely onto its 150,000-plus target stars, according to Space.com. Needless to say, it's a huge blow for its mission.

Yet some scientists are optimistic about the telescope's ability to recover. Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics at Stanford's School of Engineering, is one of them. He believes that NASA could bring the spacecraft back online with a few tweaks.

"There are two possible ways to salvage the spacecraft that I'm aware of," Hubbard said in an interview with Spacedaily.com. "One is that they could try turning back on the reaction wheel that they shut off a year ago. The other scheme, and this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability."

The telescope itself is currently located about 40 million miles from our planet. It orbits the sun rather than the Earth, which makes it impossible to send in astronauts to service the instrument.

Whatever NASA engineers attempt to do, it will take a few weeks to put together a recovery plan. Currently, it's unknown if any potential fixes will do the trick, but NASA officials are keeping their fingers crossed.

"I wouldn't call Kepler down-and-out just yet," said NASA sciences chief John Grunsfeld to reporters.

Want to see some of Kepler's finds? Check them out here.