http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/nasa-s-planet-hunting-space-telescope-nears-its-end

Until several of its pointing gyroscopes failed, Kepler stared at a fixed field of the sky containing 150,000 stars.

Kepler, the NASA space telescope that almost single-handedly transformed the study of exoplanets, may have sent its last data home. Managers halted the craft's latest observing campaign last month, when its pointing became unstable—a sign of low fuel supplies. To conserve fuel, they put it in "nap mode" until a scheduled high-speed download opportunity began on 10 October. Observations are still on hold as the mission team sifts the spacecraft's vital signs for hints of the remaining fuel supply, but the end could come suddenly and without warning, says project scientist Jessie Dotson of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California. "The only way to tell is to watch the spacecraft," she says. "We'll know when we know."