Year in review: Kepler gets second chance at life

Planet hunter spots hundreds of new worlds

Kepler spacecraft

 

BORN AGAIN  This year, Kepler engineers figured out how to stabilize the almost-defunct Kepler telescope, while astronomers found hundreds more worlds.

Wendy Stenzel/Kepler mission/NASA

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The Kepler space telescope is not quite dead. NASA’s planet-hunting space observatory got a second chance at life this year.