After several months of trying to reboot, mission planners for the exoplanet hunter have declared the satellite's failure official. The European COROT satellite has discovered 32 exoplanets since its December 2006 launch, with 100 candidates awaiting confirmation. CNES / D. DUCROS Exoplanet researchers are having a rough year. Just a few weeks after NASA announced its Kepler spacecraft had stopped working, the French space agency CNES has declared its own exoplanet hunter, COROT, is officially “mission accomplie.” The COROT (Convection, Rotation, and planetary Transits) satellite actually stopped sending data last November. Since then, engineers have been wracking their brains and...
↧