On Jan. 11, 2026, I watched anxiously on the tightly managed Vandenberg House Power Base in California as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA’s new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit.
Exoplanets are worlds that orbit different stars. They’re very tricky to watch as a result of – noticed from Earth – they seem as extraordinarily faint dots proper subsequent to their host stars, which can be thousands and thousands to billions of occasions brighter and drown out the sunshine mirrored by means of the planets. The Pandora telescope will sign up for and supplement NASA’s James Webb House Telescope in learning those far flung planets and the celebs they orbit.
I’m an astronomy professor on the College of Arizona who makes a speciality of research of planets round different stars and astrobiology. I’m a co-investigator of Pandora and main its exoplanet science running crew. We constructed Pandora to shatter a barrier – to know and take away a supply of noise within the information – that limits our talent to review small exoplanets intimately and seek for lifestyles on them.
Looking at exoplanets
Astronomers have a trick to review exoplanet atmospheres. By way of gazing the planets as they orbit in entrance in their host stars, we will learn about starlight that filters via their atmospheres.
Those planetary transit observations are very similar to maintaining a tumbler of crimson wine as much as a candle: The sunshine filtering via will display bits and bobs that disclose the standard of the wine. By way of examining starlight filtered during the planets’ atmospheres, astronomers can in finding proof for water vapor, hydrogen, clouds or even seek for proof of lifestyles. Researchers advanced transit observations in 2002, opening an exhilarating window to new worlds.
When a planet passes in entrance of its big name, astronomers can measure the dip in brightness, and notice how the sunshine filtering during the planet’s surroundings adjustments.
For some time, it looked as if it would paintings completely. However, ranging from 2007, astronomers famous that starspots – cooler, lively areas at the stars – would possibly disturb the transit measurements.
In 2018 and 2019, then-Ph.D. pupil Benjamin V. Rackham, astrophysicist Mark Giampapa and I revealed a sequence of research appearing how darker starspots and brighter, magnetically lively stellar areas can critically deceive exoplanets measurements. We dubbed this downside “the transit light source effect.”
Maximum stars are noticed, lively and alter incessantly. Ben, Mark and I confirmed that those adjustments modify the alerts from exoplanets. To make issues worse, some stars even have water vapor of their higher layers – regularly extra outstanding in starspots than outdoor of them. That and different gases can confuse astronomers, who would possibly suppose that they discovered water vapor within the planet.
In our papers – revealed 3 years earlier than the 2021 release of the James Webb House Telescope – we predicted that the Webb can not succeed in its complete attainable. We sounded the alarm bell. Astronomers learned that we have been making an attempt to pass judgement on our wine in mild of flickering, volatile candles.
Individuals of the Pandora SmallSat workforce with the finished satellite tv for pc in Blue Canyon Applied sciences’ cleanroom in Boulder, Colorado, earlier than Pandora used to be shipped to California for integration into the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Blue Canyon Applied sciences
The start of Pandora
Artist’s thought of NASA’s Pandora House Telescope.
NASA’s Goddard House Flight Heart/Conceptual Symbol Lab, CC BY
Pandora breaks with NASA’s typical style. We proposed and constructed Pandora quicker and at a considerably cheaper price than is conventional for NASA missions. Our means supposed holding the challenge easy and accepting slightly upper dangers.
What makes Pandora particular?
Pandora is smaller and can not acquire as a lot mild as its larger brother Webb. However Pandora will do what Webb can not: It’s going to be capable of patiently practice stars to know the way their advanced atmospheres trade.
By way of looking at a celeb for twenty-four hours with visual and infrared cameras, it’s going to measure delicate adjustments within the big name’s brightness and hues. When lively areas within the big name rotate out and in of view, and starspots shape, evolve and fritter away, Pandora will document them. Whilst Webb very infrequently returns to the similar planet in the similar software configuration and nearly by no means displays their host stars, Pandora will revisit its goal stars 10 occasions over a yr, spending over 200 hours on each and every of them.
NASA’s Pandora challenge will revolutionize the learn about of exoplanet atmospheres.
With that knowledge, our Pandora workforce will be capable of work out how the adjustments within the stars impact the noticed planetary transits. Like Webb, Pandora will practice the planetary transit occasions, too. By way of combining information from Pandora and Webb, our workforce will be capable of perceive what exoplanet atmospheres are made from in additional element than ever earlier than.
After the a success release, Pandora is now circling Earth about each and every 90 mins. Pandora’s programs and purposes are actually being examined completely by means of Blue Canyon Applied sciences, Pandora’s number one builder.
A couple of week after release, keep an eye on of the spacecraft will transition to the College of Arizona’s Multi-Undertaking Operation Heart in Tucson, Arizona. Then the paintings of our science groups starts in earnest and we can start shooting starlight filtered during the atmospheres of different worlds – and notice them with a brand new, secure eye.
