The seventeenth observing campaign of the Kepler spacecraft’s K2 extended mission is now underway. The cartoon illustrates some of the objects of interest that Kepler is observing for 68 days, from Mar. 1 to May 8, 2018. The campaign has prospects for discoveries among more 30,000 objects in the direction of the constellation Virgo.
NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Author: Alison Hawkes, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley
Image Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Ann Marie Cody