Exoplanet Exploration Program

The loss of a second of the four reaction wheels on board the Kepler spacecraft in May 2013 brought an end to Kepler's four plus year science mission to continuously monitor more than 150,000 stars to search for transiting exoplanets. The K2 mission represented a new concept for spacecraft operations that enabled continued scientific observations with the Kepler space telescope. K2 became fully operational in June 2014 and ended space operations in 2018. The Project successfully completed data processing and closeout in September 2020.

After nine years in deep space collecting data that revealed our night sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope ran out of fuel needed for further science operations. In 2018, NASA retired the spacecraft within its current, safe orbit, away from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system, many of which could be promising places for life.

The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) is a NASA-funded instrument that combines the light from the twin telescope mirrors to make high-resolution measurements of stars and galaxies and measure the emission from dust orbiting nearby stars.

NN-EXPLORE is a partnership between NASA and the National Science Foundation to provide the astronomy community with the tools and access to conduct ground-based observations that advance exoplanet science, with particular emphasis on Kepler, K2, and TESS follow-up observations, as well as observations that inform future NASA missions.