What Happens Now That NASA's Exoplanet-Hunting Telescope Is Dead?

During its nine-year life span, the Kepler space telescope discovered more than 2,600 planets outside our solar system and expanded our understanding of the universe. But engineers discovered it was running low on fuel earlier this summer and extracted the last of the data before the telescope’s mission ended. NASA has decided to retire the spacecraft, and it will now continue its current orbit around the sun for eternity.

Kepler was NASA’s first planet-hunting mission and it was widely successful. The data is still being analyzed, but it indicates that there are probably billions more exoplanets in our galaxy, some which may contain life.

So what now? Several exoplanet-hunting missions are in the works, according to MIT Technology Review, including the James Webb Space Telescope, which is now due to launch in 2021 after a series of delays. Plus, NASA’s newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in April and has already identified two potential life-sustaining planets.