 All good things must come to an end, and a giant of the space sciences of the exoplanet variety is about to finally fade away. And this is your space pod for Thursday, March 29th, 2018. The Kepler Space Telescope is one of the most incredible instruments humanity has ever created. It serves one purpose, find other planets. It's life from a world looking for other worlds. It's been in space for nine years now. And of the currently 3,743 confirmed exoplanets, 2,649 have been discovered by Kepler. Using the transit method, looking for the minute dips in light from a star as a potential planet in orbit around it blocks some of the star's light. Our understanding is now that in the Milky Way, just by itself, we should expect a trillion individual planets. Now Kepler survived a technical issue that should have ended its mission in 2012, the loss of multiple reaction wheels used to point a spacecraft precisely without that precision pointing Kepler should have been done for. But give engineers enough coffee and they can figure out anything. And they noted that the symmetrical design of the Kepler Space Telescope, they found a way to use the photon pressure, the actual physical force of light itself to balance the spacecraft with routine firings of its thrusters. Now engineers estimated enough fuel was in the tank to allow for 10 observational periods in what has been now known as the K2 mission. And Kepler just wrapped up its 16th observational period and is entering into its 17th observational period which will likely be its last. Knowing precisely how much fuel is in the tanks of a spacecraft is difficult in a microgravity environment but the remaining fuel will be used to continue to allow for downlink of as much data from Kepler as possible. And Kepler answered an important science question that we legitimately did not have a solid answer for. Are other planets a rare occurrence or are they numerous in our universe? And it turns out that planets in our universe, they most likely outpopulate the stars. And the future with missions like the transiting exoplanet survey satellite tests and the James Webb Space Telescope may help us begin to characterize these exoplanets. And who knows what else they'll find thanks to Kepler's data. So don't forget to check out our previous Tomorrow Space Show orbit 11.12 where we have Dr. Chris McKay on to talk about life in the universe. And don't forget to help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow as well by visiting patreon.com slash tmro or makersupport.com slash tmro. So until the next space pod, keep exploring.