NASA reports Kepler satellite enters Emergency Mode

A spacecraft emergency has been declared by the Kepler Mission, as mission engineers have discovered that the Kepler spacecraft is in Emergency Mode (EM). As reported by NASA, the startling find was made during a scheduled contact with the spacecraft on April 7. Emergency Mode is Kepler’s lowest operational mode and uses up large amounts of fuel. The team behind the Kepler Mission is now racing to recover from EM. Declaring a spacecraft emergency helps them to fix the problem even faster, as it grants them priority access to ground-based communications at NASA’s Deep Space Network. More

(Source: RedOrbit - Apr 11)