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NASA's Pandora Exoplanet Observatory Checks In Healthy, Commissioning Underway

The small telescope aims to isolate planetary atmospheres by measuring host‑star variability with simultaneous visible and infrared sensors.

Overview

  • Mission controllers confirmed full signal and initial operations following the Jan. 11 launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
  • The spacecraft deployed into a Sun‑synchronous dusk–dawn orbit, as observed and later confirmed by the agency.
  • Instrument checkouts and early operations are beginning from the University of Arizona mission operations center in Tucson.
  • The one‑year campaign targets about 20 exoplanet systems with repeated 24‑hour observations, revisiting each star ten times to model and subtract stellar activity.
  • NASA Goddard leads the mission with contributions from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Corning, Blue Canyon Technologies, and NASA Ames, after a rideshare that also carried SPARCS and BlackCAT.