Pick up to 4 telescopes to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it.
Space telescope data has underpinned 1.5 million+ scientific papers since 1990.
| Attribute | |
|---|---|
| Agency | NASA |
| Status | Retired |
| Wavelength band | optical |
| Launch year | 2009 – 2018 |
| Orbit | Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit |
| Mirror / aperture | 1.4 mas of [1] |
| Mass | 1,052 kgas of [1] |
| Wavelength range | 0.43–0.89 μm (optical) |
| Key missions |
|
| Summary | The mission that proved planets are abundant throughout the galaxy. Kepler monitored 150,000+ stars continuously for 4 years, finding that most stars host planets. A reaction wheel failure in 2013 ended the primary mission; the repurposed K2 mission (2014–2018) found 1,000+ additional planets before fuel ran out. |
All 9 major space telescopes with primary-source citations from NASA, ESA, STScI, and JPL. Pure URL state — bookmark or share the link and the comparison reproduces exactly.