Planet-hunting spacecaft is broken

This artist rendering released by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows the different types of planets in our Milky Way galaxy detected by NASAs Kepler spacecraft. Source: AP

NASA'S planet-hunting telescope is broken.

NASA said the Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four wheels that control the telescope's orientation in space.

If engineers can't find a fix, the failure means Kepler won't be able to look for planets outside our solar system anymore.

Kepler was launched in 2009 in search of Earth-like planets. So far, it has confirmed 132 planets and spotted more than 2,00 potential ones.

While ground telescopes can hunt for exoplanets, Kepler is much more advanced.

Deputy project manager Charles Sobeck says there's a backlog of data that scientists still need to analyse even if Kepler's planet-hunting days may be numbered.

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