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On Jan. 11, 2026, I enjoyed anxiously at the firmly managed Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as a breathtaking SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket brought NASA’s brand-new exoplanet telescope, Pandorainto orbit.
Exoplanets are worlds that orbit other stars. They are really tough to observe because– seen from Earth– they look like exceptionally faint dots best beside their host stars, which are millions to billions of times brighter and hush the light shown by the worlds. The Pandora telescope will sign up with and match NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in studying these distant worlds and the stars they orbit.
I am an astronomy teacher at the University of Arizona who concentrates on research studies of worlds around other stars and astrobiology. I am a co-investigator of Pandora and leading its exoplanet science working group. We developed Pandora to shatter a barrier– to comprehend and get rid of a source of sound in the information– that restricts our capability to study little exoplanets in information and look for life on them.Observing exoplanetsAstronomers have a technique to study exoplanet environments. By observing the worlds as they orbit in front of their host stars, we can research study starlight that filters through their environments.
These planetary transit observations resemble holding a glass of red white wine approximately a candle light: The light infiltrating will reveal great information that expose the quality of the red wine. By examining starlight infiltrated the worlds’ environments, astronomers can discover proof for water vapor, hydrogen, clouds and even look for proof of lifeScientist enhanced transit observations in 2002opening an amazing window to brand-new worlds.
Discovering exoplanets with the transit technique – YouTube
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For a while, it appeared to work completely. Beginning from 2007, astronomers kept in mind that starspots– cooler, active areas on the stars– might disrupt the transit measurements.
In 2018 and 2019, then-Ph. D. trainee Benjamin V. Rackhamastrophysicist Mark Giampapa and I released a series of research studies demonstrating how darker starspots and brighter, magnetically active excellent areas can seriously deceive exoplanets measurements. We called this issue “the transit light source effect.”
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Many stars are spotted active and modification constantlyBen, Mark and I revealed that these modifications change the signals from exoplanets. To make things even worse, some stars likewise have water vapor in their upper layers– frequently more popular in starspots than beyond them. That and other gases can puzzle astronomers, who might believe that they discovered water vapor in the world.
In our documents– released 3 years before the 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope — we forecasted that the Webb can not reach its complete capacity. We sounded the alarm bell. Astronomers understood that we were attempting to evaluate our white wine due to flickering, unsteady candle lights.
Members of the Pandora SmallSat group with
the finished satellite in Blue Canyon Technologies’cleanroom in Boulder, Colorado, before Pandora was delivered to California for combination into the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
(Image credit: Blue Canyon Technologies)The birth of PandoraFor me, Pandora started with an appealing e-mail from NASA in 2018. 2 popular researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Elisa Quintana and Tom Barclayasked to chat. They had an uncommon strategy: They wished to develop an area telescope really rapidly to assist take on excellent contamination– in time to help Webb. This was an interesting concept, however likewise really tough. Area telescopes are extremely complicated, and not something that you would usually wish to create in a rush.
Artist’s principle of NASA’s Pandora Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab, CC BY)Pandora breaks with NASA’s traditional design. We proposed and constructed Pandora quicker and at a considerably lower expense than is normal for NASA objectives. Our method indicated keeping the objective basic and accepting rather greater threats.What makes Pandora unique?Pandora is smaller sized and can not gather as much light as its larger bro Webb. Pandora will do what Webb can not: It will be able to patiently observe stars to comprehend how their complex environments alter.
By looking at a star for 24 hours with noticeable and infrared electronic cameras, it will determine subtle modifications in the star’s brightness and colors. When active areas in the star turn in and out of view, and starspots form, develop and dissipate, Pandora will tape them. While Webb extremely seldom goes back to the exact same world in the exact same instrument setup and nearly never ever monitors their host stars, Pandora will review its target stars 10 times over a year, costs over 200 hours on each of them.
With that info, our Pandora group will have the ability to find out how the modifications in the stars impact the observed planetary transits. Like Webb, Pandora will observe the planetary transit occasions, too. By integrating information from Pandora and Webb, our group will have the ability to comprehend what exoplanet environments are made from in more information than ever in the past.
After the effective launch, Pandora is now circling around Earth about every 90 minutes. Pandora’s systems and functions are now being evaluated completely by Blue Canyon TechnologiesPandora’s main home builder.
About a week after launch, control of the spacecraft will shift to the University of Arizona’s Multi-Mission Operation Center in Tucson, Arizona. The work of our science groups starts in earnest and we will start catching starlight filtered through the environments of other worlds– and see them with a brand-new, stable eye.
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