Preparations continue for the first K2 campaign in the ecliptic plane, the
orbital path of planets in our solar system. Scheduled to begin in early March,
Campaign 0 primarily will be an engineering dress rehearsal for the K2 mission.
This initial campaign will ensure that the K2 mission will be ready to proceed
if it is approved, following the 2014
Astrophysics Senior Review of Operating Missions.
During the final test prior to this campaign we were very encouraged to see
that the spacecraft operated throughout the test using the fine
guidance sensors mounted on the focal plane. Having now brought the data
back from the spacecraft, we have found that during the test, one of the science
detector modules failed.
The Kepler focal plane is approximately one foot
square. It's composed of 25 individually mounted modules. The four corner
modules are used for fine guiding and the other 21 modules are used for science
observing.
mage Credit: NASA Ames
The Kepler focal plane is made up of a mosaic of 21 science detector modules.
Four years ago, less than a year into the mission, one of the modules (Module 3)
failed. An extensive review was unable to determine a specific cause, but was
able to isolate the problem to a part failure in the circuitry powering that
module. The new failure, Module 7, appears to be another occurrence of the same,
or very similar, problem. We have only begun our assessment of the problem, but
it is likely to be another isolated occurrence of a part failure, with no
overall implications to a potential K2 mission. The remaining 19 modules still
allow for a very large view of the sky, and the target resources that would have
fallen on Module 7 have been reassigned to the remaining modules. At this time,
it does not appear that this will have any impact on the Campaign 0
planning.
In the mean time, a paper has
been submitted to the astronomy journal Publications of the Astronomical
Society of the Pacific (PASP) describing details of the proposed K2
operations and the results of the testing that have been accomplished to
characterize the mission performance. The paper describes the potential science
that the new mission could deliver, and is intended to inform the scientific
community of the potential opportunities so, if approved, the mission would be
ready to effectively conduct meaningful studies.
We have also been actively engaged in preparing for the news
announcement tomorrow, announcing the latest Kepler discoveries. We invite
the public to listen to the news teleconference live via UStream, at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc.
Regards,
Roger
Roger
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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