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Project Kepler launch delayed
The project launch delayed by 8 months due to budget cuts and consolodation at NASA -
Kepler Telescope launched
The Kepler telescope, named after a Renaissance Astronomer- Johannes Kepler, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex in Florida -
Kepler begins research among the stars
Kepler officially began its research for planets at 8:01 pm Eastern time. -
Kepler sends its first science data to earth
The spacecraft sent its first collection of scientifical data down to earth even though it had been found to be in a 'safe mode' just three days prior on June 15th. -
Second Safe mode
The telescope enters safe mode yet again and NASA concludes these occurances are due to a program reset. -
Telescope finds earth size planet outside of solar system
The telescope detected a planet with earthly dimesnions outside our known solar system and scientists concluded its 2000 light years away from us -
Kepler declared as a 'fail'
Even thought the model was declared as 'failed' because of the various malfunctions, it still did more than what was originally anticipated. -
One of the Four wheels fails
One of the four 'reaction wheels' failed and that put the mission at risk because the telescope required three wheels for it to aim properly and if one more fail occured, the mission would be canceled. -
Wheels have friction
NASA reported that the three remaining wheels had friction. The operation was put on a pause for ten days so the team can fix the problem. -
Operation back on
the operation was back on 'science collection mode' even though the friction between the wheels still continued to preside/ -
Second wheel fail
A second wheel failed and the telescope was put in "point rest state" until July 2013 -
Kepler enters safe mode
scientists announced that during one of the weekly checkups, they found the telescope had entered a 'safe mode' and therefore, was no longer recording data -
Trying to reslove the issue
NASA engineers try to resolve the issue with the wheels, even mothns the problem had occured but hav had no luck doing so -
Second chance for the Kepler
The K2 or "second light plan" proposed that the disabled Kepler to be utilized in a way to locate inhabitable planets around smaller and dimmer dwarf stars -
Life Substantial Planet as big as earth discoverd
First earth sized planet discovered by the Kepler. NASA recently discovered that the planet is 490 light years away and may contain water. They named it Kepler 186-f -
K2 Mission
NASA announced the approval of extending the original Kepler miaaion to the K2 mission