A refrigerator-sized satellite lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on 11 January aboard a SpaceX rocket, carrying outsized ambitions for the study of distant worlds. Pandora, the first satellite launched under NASA's Astrophysics Pioneers programme of small-scale, low-cost missions, will spend a year keeping sustained watch on 20 exoplanet systems around small stars, using a 0.45-metre telescope equipped for visible-light photometry and near-infrared spectroscopy.
The mission tackles a problem that bedevils the James Webb Space Telescope's most tantalising targets. Earth-sized planets orbiting K and M dwarf stars are ideal for transit observations, but the stars themselves produce flares, hot spots and atmospheric effects that can masquerade as planetary signals. By staring at each system for long stretches, Pandora is designed to separate what belongs to the star from what belongs to the planet's atmosphere, sharpening the interpretation of Webb's data.
Cornell astronomer Nikole Lewis, whose group's roughly ten years of work on Earth-sized planets around small stars helped inspire the project, serves on the science team, and former group member Trevor Foote is among the early-career scientists the Pioneers programme is designed to train in mission leadership. For a university with a long tradition in planetary science, the mission extends a lineage that runs from Carl Sagan to the current search for habitable worlds.