The exoplanet hunting telescope may be dead. Researchers have sent it into sleep mode to hopefully ensure that it will have enough fuel to do its scheduled data transfer on October 10.
There may be a little left over to do a few final observations, but this is very close to the end of the Kepler mission.
The news is not bad, though - Kepler's replacement, TESS, has already started doing its own surveys - and TESS, planned to operate for two years (although NASA's history shows a good record of keeping spacecraft operational beyond their initial parameters) will offer superior resolution and may well find planets Kepler missed. Especially earth-sized planets.
We are in a very exciting time for astronomy!
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