A miniaturesatellitetasked with searching for planets outside thesolar systemhas gone dark, mission operators atNasahave said.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) saidthey were last able to communicate with the satellite, dubbedASTERIA, on December 5.
The briefcase-sized spacecraft was first of its kind to be deployed into Earth orbit in and spent three months “planet-hunting” by observing changes in the brightness of nearby stars.
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Dips in a star’s brightness indicate an orbiting planet passing between the satellite and the star, known as the transit method.
After completing its first mission in February (**********************************************************************, ASTERIA continued to operate through three mission extensions.
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Itsuccessfully observedthe transit of previously-discovered exoplanet 139 Cancri e after completing its first mission, earning it “Mission of the Year” at the Small Satellite Conference in (***********************************************************************. ********
ASTERIA program manager Lorraine Fesq said: “The ASTERIA project achieves outstanding results during its three-month prime mission and its nearly two-year-long extended mission.
“Although we are disappointed that we lost contact with the spacecraft, we are thrilled with all that we have accomplished with this impressive CubeSat.”
CubeSats are a category of small satellites created to demonstrate how many technologies necessary for studying and finding (exoplanetscan be minimized to fit on small satellites.
ASTERIA was also used to test various software and capabilities to make CubeSats more autonomous while in orbit and paved the way for smaller satellites to be used in larger missions.
It was developed under the Phaeton program as a collaboration project between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and JPL, initially as a tool for training early-career space engineers.
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