A reforma do Kepler (NASA)

O combustível acabou. O que lhe vai acontecer?
https://www.space.com/42301-kepler-space-telescope-ultimate-fate.html

Citando:
"(...) There will be some jostling over the decades. By 2060, for example, the faster-orbiting Earth will have almost caught up with Kepler, NASA officials explained in a new video. Our planet's gravity will then nudge the space telescope toward the sun a bit, and Kepler will move ahead of Earth on a slightly shorter, faster orbit. But in 2117, Kepler will pop back onto its old path after another encounter with Earth. And the cycle will continue.

So a rescue or refueling mission would be nearly impossible, NASA officials have said. Astronauts repaired and upgraded the agency's Hubble Space Telescope five separate times from 1993 to 2009, but Hubble resides in low-Earth orbit, a mere 353 miles (569 kilometers) above our planet. 

Kepler launched in March 2009, tasked with determining how common Earth-like planets are around the Milky Way galaxy. The spacecraft hunted for alien worlds using the "transit method," noting the tiny dips in stars' brightness caused by orbiting planets crossing their faces."

E mais informações:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)

TESS, Kepler e os exoplanetas (NASA)

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/get-ready-for-a-flood-of-new-exoplanets-tess-has-already-spotted-two/

Citando:
"TESS images a single area for roughly a month before moving on to the next. Over the course of a year, this will allow it to capture most of the sky in a single hemisphere; it will switch to the other hemisphere for its second year of observations. Should the hardware still be operational at the two-year mark, it will have imaged most of the sky, and a similar cycle will likely start again.

This cadence creates some trade offs. If a planet's orbit is such that it doesn't pass in front of its star during the month TESS happens to be pointing that way, we'll miss it (unless it's part of the small overlap between separate areas). This will bias us toward finding planets with short orbital periods, where a transit is guaranteed to happen whenever TESS gets around to pointing at it. Short enough orbits mean we can observe multiple transits during that month, confirming the planet's existence without the need for follow-on observations."