【】But Kepler is now running low on gas.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been peering deep into the Milky Way galaxy for nearly a decade. It has spotted over 2,500 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars, and over 2,500 more possible worlds are waiting to be confirmed. Thirty of these confirmed planets live inside their host stars' habitable zones, places where liquid water could exist like it does on Earth.  。

But Kepler is now running low on gas.
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"With nary a gas station to be found in deep space, the spacecraft is going to run out of fuel," Charlie Sobeck 。, the system engineer for the Kepler space telescope mission, said in a NASA statement. 。

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"We expect to reach that moment within several months."。

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Out there, in the void, it's extremely unlikely that Kepler will become a threatening piece of space junk that could pose collision hazards to other satellites.。

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In 2013, a wheel used to keep the spacecraft pointed in the right direction broke, meaning that Kepler's entire mission -- which hinged on pointing in one specific direction -- had to change. 。

However, NASA found a way to temporarily stabilize the telescope for months at a time by using pressure from sunlight, "like a kayak steering into the current," said Sobeck.。

An artist's conception of the exoplanet Kepler-22b, a planet about two and half times that of Earth orbiting in its solar system's habitable zone.Credit: nasa 。

When Kepler spots an exoplanet, however, it doesn't actually capture an image of the distant planetary body -- they're much too far away. Instead, Kepler watches a star for dips in brightness as a planet occasionally transits in front of the distant star.。

NASA scientists can then judge the size and possible composition of the exoplanet based upon how long it took to travel around the star and how much light the planet temporarily blocked.。

In December 2017, Kepler shifted its view and caught a blast of reflected light from Earth in its extremely sensitive camera, ultimately appearing as a vertical beam of light.Credit: nasa
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