NASA update on Kepler observatory failure
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20130515.html

Letter from Palue Blue Dot project
From: Travis Metcalfe tmetcalfe@spacescience.org

Dear Friends,

Thanks again for supporting our scientific research by adopting a Kepler
star through the non-profit Pale Blue Dot project.

Today NASA announced that a hardware failure on the Kepler space telescope
may bring the mission to a premature end. The mission was designed to run
for 4 years, but it was recently extended to 2016 to continue the search
for planets like the Earth in the habitable zones of other stars like the
Sun where liquid water -- and potentially life -- might exist. Learn more
at http://www.nasa.gov/kepler/

The impact of this failure on our science is already clear, eliminating
more than $100,000 in support that our U.S. team members were scheduled to
receive from NASA in 2014. Although the telescope may no longer continue
collecting new observations, the existing archive of data is filled with
potential discoveries that will keep us busy for years to come.

Please help us continue our work, studying the parent stars of the planets
discovered by Kepler -- those already known, and waiting to be discovered.
To replace our lost funding, we are aiming for 10,000 new star adoptions
over the next month. Please tell your friends and "like" our website at
http://whitedwarf.org/palebluedot/

Happy planet hunting,

Travis Metcalfe
Pale Blue Dot project
White Dwarf Research Corp.