Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2016

PLANETOLOGY 25 The “second life” of the Kepler space telescope is proving increasingly interesting and discoveries of new exoplanets candidates still follow one another. In just over two years more than 450 have been found, one- third of which were confirmed by large ground-based telescopes. Of all the newly discovered systems, the most interesting is that of the red dwarf K2-72, which hosts 4 Earth-sized planets, almost certainly rocky. W hen in 2012 and 2013 two of Kep- ler’s gyroscopes stopped working and no longer able to keep the telescope pointed with super-accuracy on the small sky area that it was meant to con- stantly monitor, it looked like the end for SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2016 exoplanets T he background illustration depicts the new observational strate- gy of the Kepler space telescope which, since the start of the K2 mission, is targeting sky regions arranged along the ecliptic. By ex- ploiting the pressure exerted by the solar radiation, NASA engineers managed to get round the pointing stability problem caused by the malfunction of two gyroscopes and ensured another four years of operation for the telescope. [NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle]