NASA Pandora mission starts science phase

NASA said on August 25 that Pandora, its newest exoplanet mission, had entered science operations and started observing planets beyond the solar system and the stars they orbit. The small satellite is the first spacecraft launched through NASA’s Astrophysics Pioneers program, according to the agency. Pandora’s job is not to find new planets, but to make cleaner measurements of atmospheres on worlds already known from transit surveys. NASA said those observations are intended to support work by the James Webb Space Telescope and future planet-hunting observatories. ### Why does Pandora watch both the planet and the star? Pandora will observe exoplanet systems in both visible and near-infrared light, NASA said. That matters because astronomers trying to read a planet’s atmosphere through a transit also have to deal with the host star itself, whose bright and dark patches can distort the signal. (science.nasa.gov) Elisa Quintana, Pandora’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said the mission is meant to address that problem directly. “Pandora’s data will help close a major gap in our knowledge about planets and their host stars because, right now, we can’t be entirely sure how the star’s light affects measurements of what makes up exoplanet atmospheres,” she said in NASA’s August 25 release. (science.nasa.gov) ### What kind of planets will it study? NASA said Pandora is slated to observe at least 20 different planets during one year of science operations. The mission will determine the atmospheric make-up of at least 20 exoplanets, including looking for hazes, clouds and water, according to the agency’s mission page and release. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says the broader program covers 20 stars and 39 exoplanets, with Pandora using repeated observations to build up cleaner atmospheric measurements over time. (science.nasa.gov) An agency infographic said the spacecraft will revisit roughly 20 exoplanets in its first year, with each target observed about 10 times in 24-hour sessions. ### How is Pandora different from Webb? (science.nasa.gov) NASA said Pandora is designed for longer, repeated looks at the same targets than flagship observatories such as Webb can usually provide. The spacecraft’s observing plan pairs long-duration monitoring with simultaneous multiwavelength measurements, which NASA says should help astronomers separate changes in starlight from the chemical fingerprints of planetary atmospheres. (science.gsfc.nasa.gov) The James Webb Space Telescope remains the more powerful observatory, but NASA said Pandora’s results will “lay a firm foundation” for interpreting Webb measurements. NASA also noted that Pandora’s near-infrared detector is a spare originally developed for Webb. ### What has happened since launch? Pandora launched into low Earth orbit on January 11, 2026, NASA said. (science.nasa.gov) The spacecraft then went through commissioning before beginning science observations, and NASA said the satellite is healthy and its instruments are performing as planned. Jordan Karburn, Pandora’s deputy project manager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in NASA’s release that the team had completed that transition. “The spacecraft is healthy and all of the instruments are performing as well as we could have hoped,” Karburn said. “Our team’s hard work throughout the commissioning process has paid off, and we can now confidently start science.” (science.nasa.gov) ### Who is running the mission? NASA said Pandora is led by Goddard Space Flight Center and involves Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center and other institutions. NASA’s Ames center handles data processing, while the mission operations center is at the University of Arizona in Tucson, according to NASA’s post-launch update. During the next year, Pandora will continue repeated transit observations of its target list, NASA said, producing data meant to improve atmospheric readings for at least 20 exoplanets and to complement James Webb observations of those systems. (science.nasa.gov 1) (science.nasa.gov 2)