The Kepler Space Telescope Found Science and Art in Exoplanets

It's a very good thing spacecraft can't get bored, because if spacecraft could get bored, the Kepler space telescope would have gone out of its mind long ago. It was in March 2009 when NASA launched Kepler into orbit around the sun, pointed it to a small patch of deep space containing about 150,000 stars, and gave it one instruction: "Don't blink — ever."

Kepler, which was at last retired on Oct. 29 after running out of maneuvering fuel, obeyed, and that has paid off.