One of the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope's reaction wheels - devices that maintain the observatory's position in space - remains balky despite mitigation attempts, NASA said April 29. The mission team now regards the problem as unsolvable and is considering what the telescope can do after the wheel fails. "While the wheel may still continue to operate for some time yet, the engineering team has now turned its attention to the development of contingency actions should the wheel fail sooner, rather than later," Kepler mission manager Roger Hunter of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., wrote in an April 29 update.
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