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A Deep Space Rescue Mission, Mars 2020 & More Pluto Pics

Rendering of Kepler at work. Photo: NASA
Rendering of Kepler at work. Photo: NASA

What happens when there’s an emergency on a spacecraft 75 million miles away? Operators of the Kepler deep space telescope ran into that problem recently when a scheduled check-in proved to be a bit more difficult than expected.

Kepler is searching for exoplanets outside our solar system. Orlando Sentinel’s Emilee Speck tells us how the operators acted fast to save the spacecraft and what’s ahead for Kepler.

Plus, our home turf of Orlando played host to a space engineer conference. Emilee was there and has some interesting details on the future of the Mars 2020 Rover, along with an update from Alan Stern and New Horizons.

 

Brendan Byrne is WMFE's Assistant News Director, managing the day-to-day operations of the WMFE newsroom, editing daily news stories, and managing WMFE's internship program.

Byrne also hosts WMFE's weekly radio show and podcast "Are We There Yet?" which explores human space exploration.