NASA’s Pandora Mission Begins Study of Exoplanets, Host Stars

NASA Science reports that NASA’s Pandora satellite, launched into low Earth orbit on January eleventh, has begun its year‑long mission to probe the atmospheres of at least twenty exoplanets and the stars they orbit. The SmallSat carries an eighteen‑inch aluminum telescope and a near‑infrared detector originally built for the James Webb Space Telescope, allowing it to observe planets and their host stars simultaneously in visible and infrared light. By watching transits for extended periods, Pandora can untangle the chemical fingerprints of planetary atmospheres from confusing stellar signals such as faculae and starspots, a problem that has limited previous measurements. The mission’s findings will lay a firm foundation for interpreting data from Webb and future telescopes searching for habitable worlds.

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