NASA's latest exoplanet mission, Pandora, is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power and other systems that enable the mission to perform its job.

"This is a huge milestone for us, allowing us to launch in the fall," said Elisa Quintana, Pandora's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The bus carries our instruments and handles navigation, data acquisition and communications with Earth—it’s the brains of the spacecraft.”

The Pandora small satellite will conduct in-depth studies of at least 20 known planets orbiting distant stars to determine the composition of their atmospheres, especially the presence of haze, clouds and water. The data will provide a solid foundation for interpreting measurements from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and future missions to search for habitable worlds.

"We think the presence of water is desirable," said Goddard's Ben Hord, a NASA postdoctoral fellow who discussed the mission at the 245th National Meeting of the American Astronomical Society. An important aspect of habitation, since water is known to be vital to life." Maryland Harbor. "The problem with confirming its presence in exoplanet atmospheres is that changes in the light from the host star can mask or mimic the signal of water. Isolating these sources is where Pandora shines."

Pandora is a small, ambitious mission funded by NASA's Astrophysics Pioneer Program and is a joint effort between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and NASA's Goddard Laboratory.

"Pandora's near-infrared detector was actually developed as a backup detector for the Webb telescope, currently the most sensitive observatory for exoplanet atmospheres," Hodder added. "In turn, our observations will improve Webb's ability to separate stellar signals from planetary atmosphere signals, allowing Webb to make more precise atmospheric measurements."

From our perspective, astronomers can sample an exoplanet's atmosphere when it passes in front of its star, an event called a transit. Some of the star's light passes through the atmosphere before reaching us. This interaction causes light to interact with atmospheric materials, whose chemical fingerprints (dips in brightness at characteristic wavelengths) are imprinted in the light.

But our telescopes also see light from the entire star, not just the light passing by the planet. The surface of a star is not uniform. They have hotter, unusually bright regions (called spots) and cooler, darker regions (similar to sunspots), both of which grow, shrink, and change position as the star rotates.

Using a new all-aluminum, 45-centimeter-wide (17-inch) telescope jointly developed by Livermore and Corning Specialty Materials in Keene, N.H., the Pandora probe will simultaneously capture each star's visible brightness and near-infrared spectrum, while also acquiring Near-infrared spectra of transiting planets. This combined data will allow the science team to determine the properties of the star's surface and clearly distinguish stellar and planetary signals.

The observation strategy takes advantage of the mission's ability to continuously observe its targets for long periods of time, something a high-demand flagship mission like Webb cannot do on a regular basis.

During the year-long main mission, Pandora will observe at least 20 exoplanets 10 times, with each observation lasting a total of 24 hours. Each observation will include a transit, the time when the mission captures the planet's spectrum.

Pandora is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is responsible for project management and engineering design for the mission. The Pandora telescope is manufactured by Corning and developed in partnership with Livermore, which also developed the imaging detector components, mission control electronics, and all supporting thermal and mechanical subsystems. The infrared sensor is provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Blue Canyon Technologies provided the buses and is conducting spacecraft assembly, integration and environmental testing. NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, will perform data processing for the mission. Pandora's mission operations center is located at the University of Arizona, with a number of other universities providing support to the science team.

go through Francis Reddy
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

Media contact information:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland