NASA ends attempt to fully recover Kepler Telescope's capabilities

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope team is ending its attempts to restore the spacecraft to full working order, a NASA statement Friday said. Kepler is a space observatory craft launched in 2009 to discover planets orbiting stars outside the Solar System, and monitors brightness of stars. Two of Kepler's reaction wheels, gyroscope-like devices used to orient the spacecraft, have failed, and scientists are searching for other ways to utilize the craft, the statement said. On Aug. 2 NASA called for scientific papers suggesting other missions for the telescope, and after a review expected to finish at the end of the year, an assessment of Kepler's potential will be made.