Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2014

43 INSTRUMENTS JULY-AUGUST 2014 is back A s someone may remember, back in May 2013, the fate of the most famous exoplanet hunter, Kepler space telescope, seemed doomed. With an already malfunctioning gyroscope by some time, that month also a second gy- roscope failed and the only two remaining were insufficient to maintain the instru- ment positioned in the three axes. In fact, after having periodically measured for over 3 and a half years the brightness of A rtist’s rendering of the Kepler space telescope. [NASA]