NASA engineers have declared
a mission emergency for the agency's planet-hunting spacecraft Kepler,
which has somehow switched into emergency mode. NASA just found out about the
anomaly a day and a half ago, right before the agency tried to maneuver the
spacecraft to point at the center of the Milky Way for a new observation
campaign.
Now that a mission emergency
has been declared, the Kepler team has priority access to NASA's deep space
telecommunications system in order to try to get the spacecraft back to normal
operations.
Emergency mode is the lowest
operational mode the spacecraft has. It also requires a lot more fuel than
usual, which is why the Kepler mission team is working hard to get the
spacecraft back to normal. But communication with Kepler isn't easy.
The spacecraft is currently 75 million miles
away from Earth right now, according to NASA, so any communications signal
traveling at the speed of light will take up to 13 minutes to travel to and
from the spacecraft. NASA said it will provide updates about its efforts when
they are available.