There may be life in the old girl yet. There's a slim chance that NASA's hugely successful planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope, may recover from a recent glitch that ended its planet-hunting activities. Even if it doesn't, the telescope may still have a role – uncovering more details of the planets it has found so far.
Launched in 2009
, Kepler was designed to stare at a patch of sky and look for the minuscule dips in starlight as a planet passes in front of, or transits, its host star. The telescope has so far discovered 135 transiting planets, and thousands more candidate worlds await confirmation.
Until recently, the mission had been edging closer to its ultimate goal of finding a planet the same size as Earth in a sunlike star's habitable zone, the region where liquid water – and maybe life – can exist. In April, for instance, the Kepler team revealed a pair of habitable worlds orbiting a star slightly cooler than our sun.
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