Synthetic data for the new pointing capabilities of Kepler, showing the expected brightness variations for a planet hosting a star that transits (i.e., the planet passes in front of the star, blocking out some of the light). The red points show when the planet is transiting.
Recently, the Kepler mission announced that two reaction wheels on the spacecraft have failed, and so the telescope won’t be able to point as accurately as before. As a result, data from the telescope will suffer from large instrumental variations (see figure at right), and so it will be difficult to detect Earth-like planets. However, the telescope may be able to detect other kinds of planets and study other astronomical phenomena.
In response to a request from Kepler for new ideas of what to do with the telescope, I wrote about an idea to search for very short-period (less than 1 day) planets. A re-purposed Kepler mission could continue the search for nearly Earth-sized planets in very short-period orbits. Our recent work revealed more than a dozen such planetary candidates, and a more complete and focused survey is likely to reveal more.