After nearly a decade of groundbreaking exploration, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope concluded its mission, leaving a lasting legacy in the search for exoplanets. The spacecraft, which confirmed the ...

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has run out of fuel ...

NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which shut its powerful eye nearly five years ago, continued finding exoplanets even while taking its final breaths. A team of astrophysicists and citizen ...

The reaction wheels, shown in this diagram, are the source of Kepler's woes. (NASA graphic) NASA engineers have successfully transitioned its planet-seeking Kepler telescope to "point rest state" -- ...

NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary. Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday. Already well past its ...

A new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft increases the number of habitable exoplanets thought to exist in this galaxy. By Dennis Overbye After nine and a half years in orbit, 530,506 stars ...

If you’re looking for Earthlike planets around other stars — places about the size and temperature of our own planet, where life could in theory be found — it might seem like a letdown to stumble ...

A big, hot rock made its debut Tuesday. It's a planet orbiting a star 560 light-years away, and it is claimed to be the smallest planet discovered outside our solar system. Astronomers have found ...

Think you could stare at a single spot without blinking for 3½ years? Then be glad you’re not NASA’s Kepler telescope, which is set to blast into space from Cape Canaveral, Fla., this Friday night.

After three years of searching, scientists have caught the elusive phenomenon. — -- The "brilliant flash" that occurs when a star dies and explodes has been captured for the first time in visible ...

Launched by NASA in 2009, the Kepler space telescope was outfitted with equipment to discover and study Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way galaxy. It was named after the 17th century scientist and ...