NASA Telescope Imperiled by Glitch

Space engineers are struggling to regain control of the Kepler space telescope, which has lost its ability to aim accurately at the star systems it has been scanning for planets similar to Earth, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Wednesday.

On Sunday, the Kepler telescope, which hovers in space about 40 million miles from Earth, suspended its operations and automatically put itself into a pre-programmed safe mode. By Tuesday, space-agency mission workers had determined that one of the three reaction wheels required to orient the spacecraft had jammed, NASA officials said. So far, engineers have been unable to get it moving properly.

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