Overview
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg’s SLC-4E on Jan. 11 at 8:19 a.m. EST, with a livestream planned.
- Following insertion into low Earth orbit, Pandora will spend about a month commissioning before a one-year prime mission, with all data publicly released.
- The mission targets at least 20 exoplanet systems, revisiting each roughly 10 times with 24-hour observations to track star-driven effects on the spectra.
- Pandora carries a 45-centimeter all-aluminum telescope and a James Webb spare near-infrared detector to enable tightly synchronized, multiwavelength transit measurements.
- Two CubeSats launch alongside it: BlackCAT to detect high-energy transients such as gamma-ray bursts in X-rays, and SPARCS to monitor ultraviolet activity from low-mass stars.