NASA Decommissions the Kepler Space Telescope

Late last month, NASA announced that it would be retiring the Kepler space telescope after nearly ten years of service -- double its initial mission life. Now, as Space.com reports, the planet-hunting telescope has been officially decommissioned, 'beaming 'goodnight' commands to the sun-orbiting observatory.' From the report: 'Kepler's team disabled the safety modes that could inadvertently turn systems back on, and severed communications by shutting down the transmitters,' NASA officials wrote in a statement today (Nov. 16). 'Because the spacecraft is slowly spinning, the Kepler team had to carefully time the commands so that instructions would reach the spacecraft during periods of viable communication.'

The final commands were sent from Kepler's operations center at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, NASA officials said. The commands got to the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network, the system of big radio dishes the space agency uses to keep in touch with its far-flung probes.

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