The Kepler team has declared a spacecraft emergency, thus obtaining priority DSN access. Anomaly occurred between 4 and 7 Apr.

Another reaction wheel perhaps?

If so, that will just about be it I guess...

P

Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable

Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.

The mission has cancelled the spacecraft emergency, returning the Deep Space Network ground communications to normal scheduling.

Once data is on the ground, the team will thoroughly assess all on board systems to ensure the spacecraft is healthy enough to return to science mode and begin the K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign, called Campaign 9. This checkout is anticipated to continue through the week.

Earth-based observatories participating in Campaign 9 will continue to make observations as Kepler's health check continues. The K2 observing opportunity for Campaign 9 will end on July 1, when the galactic center is no longer in view from the vantage point of the spacecraft.

K2's previous science campaign concluded on March 23. After data was downlinked to the ground, the spacecraft was placed in what is termed Point Rest State (PRS). While in PRS, the spacecraft antenna is pointed toward Earth and it operates in a fuel-efficient mode, with the reaction wheels at rest.

The Emergency Mode began approximately 14 hours before the planned maneuver to orient the spacecraft toward the center of the Milky Way for Campaign 9. The team has therefore ruled out the maneuver and the reaction wheels as possible causes of the EM event. An investigation into what caused the event will be pursued in parallel, with a priority on returning the spacecraft to science operations.

The anomalous EM event is the first that the Kepler spacecraft has encountered during its seven years in space. Mission operations at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, Ball Aerospace and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder remain vigilant.

It was the quick response and determination of the engineers throughout the weekend that led to the recovery. We are deeply appreciative of their efforts, and for the outpouring of support from the mission's fans and followers from around the world. We also recognize the tremendous support from NASA’s Deep Space Network, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and to NASA’s other missions that surrendered their scheduled telemetry links in order to provide us with the resources needed to protect the Kepler spacecraft.

Updates will be provided as information warrants.

Spotted this update:
Mission Manager Update: Kepler Remains Stable as Health Check Continues April 16 2016: LINK

The Kepler spacecraft remains stable as the process of returning it to science continues. The cause of the anomaly, first reported on April 8, remains under investigation.

Since Sunday morning the spacecraft has remained safely "parked" in a stable pointed configuration called Point Rest State. In this state, fuel usage remains low and the communication link to Earth is good. As of Tuesday, mission operations engineers had downlinked all the necessary data from Kepler to triage the situation and plan the steps toward recovery.

The recovery to science began with a thorough assessment of the data, which took a couple days, after which the team had learned all they could about the state of the spacecraft from the data. It was then time to turn back on and test the components deemed low-risk to spacecraft health. Testing begins on the Kepler spacecraft simulator at the flight planning center at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado. With the ground-based simulation a success, we were ready to conduct the tests on Kepler, 75 million miles away. The engineers sent the instructions, along with commands for the spacecraft to protect itself and enter a safe operating mode if there was a problem, and waited for the spacecraft to report back.

The spacecraft returned a response that is the equivalent of 'so far, so good.' It did not experience any faults from switching on the components, and all the data suggest the components are working normally. The spacecraft is another step closer to returning to scientific observations for the K2 mission.

The photometer – Kepler’s camera – and the solid state recorder are powered on. The subsystem interface box, which is the interface between the spacecraft sensors and the main computer, was only briefly powered on for an initial assessment, but should be back online early next week. The team will continue recovering the components, as they are deemed safe and low-risk to the spacecraft.

Over the weekend, NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) will remain in contact with the spacecraft while the team gets some much-needed rest. To watch the worldwide array of antennae communicate with the spacecraft, tune-in to DSN Now.

The recovery started slowly and carefully, as we initially merely tried to understand the situation and recover the systems least likely to have been the cause. Over the last day and a half, we’ve begun to turn the corner, by powering on more suspect components. With just one more to go, I expect that we will soon be on the home stretch and picking up speed towards returning to normal science operations.

Updates will be provided as information warrants.

Good News:
Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered and Returned to the K2 Mission (April 22, 2016)
Link
Extract

Hmm. CR hit somewhere in the processor, perhaps? In any case, excellent news indeed. Thanks!

Looks like a good call on the CR hit....

Another update on the recent incident Release dated May 4th 2016

Mission Manager Q&A: Recovering The Kepler Spacecraft To Hunt For Exoplanets Again Link

Telecon on new discoveries in 10 minutes:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html

Starting now... slides up here: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/br...materials160510

1284 newly validated!

When are they going to start giving official names to all of these planets?

Most of these will never* be revisited again, except as entities in larger statistical studies, so we probably don't need to hand out any names for the vast majority of them.

* = Not actually "never" but anytime soon.

Keplers K2 mission adds 197 planet candidates of which 109 planets have been verified so far. One relatively nearby M class red dwarf system named K2-72 turned out to have at least 4 planets where several might be rocky.University of Arizona webpage..

Kepler seems about ready to hand the baton off to TESS.

Kepler End of Mission

Thank you, Kepler mission!

NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope

One of the greatest revelations in human history is the fact that, indeed, endless worlds beckon. For generations people were labeled insane or as hopeless dreamers for even harboring the thought.

Dreamers--yes. But dreams can be made real by those who dare, as our eyes open here in our cradle. That is the true legacy of this mission and the people who made it happen.

Thank you, Kepler team.

If you get a clear night after sunset this month, you may find Vega and Deneb in the high-to-western part of the sky and between them, give a thought to the Kepler field, where >150K stars were stared at for four years, and where most known exoplanets currently lie.

Kepler was a mission of firsts like few between it, and there's no way to summarize all those firsts briefly. Suffice it to say that thousands of new worlds were discovered. It also gave us a definitive answer about the frequency of earth-sized planets getting earth-like warming from their stars (about 0.5 per red dwarf and about 0.125 per sunlike star). That was all in a pinch under a decade (launched March 2009).

Cheers, Kepler and Kepler team!