The University of Colorado students who work the controls of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft will get another four years at the helm.
NASA announced Wednesday that Kepler's mission -- to scour a small patch of sky in search of Earth-like planets in other solar systems -- will be extended until 2016.
Kepler was built by Boulder-based Ball Aerospace and is controlled by about 20 students (with the help of professionals) at the mission control inside CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
Kepler is one of four satellites handled by students at mission control, but Kepler's mission, which appeals to basic human curiosity about whether life may exist elsewhere in the universe, makes the spacecraft especially treasured by student operators.
"They can talk to their parents about it and their relatives and friends," said Bill Possel, director of LASP mission operations and data systems. "They can say, 'I'm operating a satellite that's finding new planets every day.'"
Kepler finds planets by staring unflinchingly at faraway stars. The spacecraft detects a planet when it passes in front of its star, dimming the star's intensity as it travels. So far, Kepler has discovered 61 confirmed planets and more than 2,000 planet "candidates" that have yet to be confirmed.
The planets discovered by Kepler include the first unquestionably rocky planet, the first small planet in the habitable zone of a star -- where water might exist -- the first Earth-sized planets and the first Mars-sized planets. Kepler has also discovered the first evidence that planets are orbiting in a double-star system.
It will cost about $18 million a year to keep operating Kepler, according to The Associated Press.
The extension of Kepler's mission means more work for the CU students who are hired each year to run mission control. All students who score the job commit their summer to an arduous training schedule. The new batch of recruits will start the process in May.
"They train all summer," Possel said. "They go through the basics of operating satellites, and they get into the specifics with each satellite that we operate -- how it works. They go through some rigorous exams, both written and practical."
Besides Kepler, the students operate NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT); the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite (AIM); and the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE).
Tyler Fox, a junior majoring in computer science, said his experience so far working at mission control has been invaluable.
"It has been an awesome experience to be involved in a mission like Kepler, and having two or three years of experience controlling satellites as undergraduates definitely gives students here a head start in the job market," he said in a news release.
The $600 million Kepler mission was launched in 2009.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or firstname.lastname@example.org.