Kepler Mission Manager update, Feb. 8, 2010
Mon Feb 8, 2010 at 20:21 UTC
Kepler experienced a safe mode event on February 2, 2010. A safe mode is a self-protective measure that the spacecraft takes when something unexpected occurs. During safe mode, the spacecraft points the solar panels directly at the sun and begins to slowly rotate about a sun-aligned axis. As a safety precaution, the spacecraft turned off a redundant system, photometer, and both star trackers.
Engineers immediately began telemetry analysis to determine the spacecraft's subsystem health, and cause of the malfunction. Initial telemetry analysis indicated errant data from the star trackers, which caused the spacecraft's fault protection software to execute a safe mode.

Scientists working on the Cassini space mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus.
Opportunity has arrived at "Concepcion," a very young 10-meter (33-foot) diameter crater.
The following featured images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) are now available:
The following new images taken by the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on the Cassini spacecraft are now available:
The following new images taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft are now available:
NASA has released the most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images from the Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, mottled, dark molasses-colored world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes.
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have, for the first time, created a demographic census of galaxy types and shapes from a time before the Earth and the Sun existed, to the present day.
Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes, and binary quasars are pairs of quasars bound together by gravity. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are thought to be the product of galaxy mergers.
The following new captioned and spotlight images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft are now available:
NASA will extend the international Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons to 2017. The agency's fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued study of the ringed planet.
The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera has imaged craters both young and old in this view of the Southern Highlands of Mars.
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never before been seen.
Images from the latest vulcanoid search are currently being transmitted to Earth, and one of those 256 images is shown here. Vulcanoids are small rocky bodies that have been postulated to exist in orbits between Mercury and the Sun, though no such object has yet been detected.
Opportunity has been driving towards "Concepcion," a 10-meter (33-foot) diameter crater to the south of Marquette Island.



