After completing its primary mission, Kepler’s operations were suspended due to a reaction wheel failure, but that didn’t stop Kepler. Our engineers and the rest of the Kepler team developed a new mission for the Kepler spacecraft, dubbed K2. The mission uses an innovative way to control pointing in the spacecraft by managing solar pressure and using thrusters. The K2 mission provides an opportunity to continue Kepler’s ground-breaking discoveries in the field of exoplanets and expand its role into new astrophysical observations.

K2 will perform a series of 80-day campaigns to conduct research into planet formation, young stars, stellar structure, evolution and extragalactic science. It will observe tens of thousands of stars per campaign and will transmit science data to the ground once every 80 days. K2 will search for new planets around bright stars and habitable worlds around M class stars to help pave the way for future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope.

In 2018, the Flight Planning Center at Ball Aerospace received a NASA Group Achievement Award for the execution of this innovative solution. The team's work enabled the Kepler spacecraft to return valuable scientific data long after its projected mission lifetime.