NASA SVS | NASA’s Pandora Satellite to Discover Exoplanets and Stars

The NASA Pandora spacecraft will observe planets as they cross in entrance of their stars as seen from our perspective, occasions known as transits.

As starlight passes by a planet’s environment, it interacts with substances like water and oxygen that take up attribute wavelengths, including their chemical fingerprints to the sign.

But whereas solely a small fraction of the star’s gentle grazes the planet, telescopes additionally accumulate the remainder of the sunshine emitted by the star’s dealing with aspect. Stellar surfaces can sport brighter and darker areas that develop, shrink, and alter place over time, suppressing or magnifying indicators from planetary atmospheres. Adding an additional complication, a few of these areas might include the identical chemical compounds that astronomers hope to search out within the planet’s environment, corresponding to water vapor.

All these elements make it tough to make certain that essential detected molecules come from the planet alone.

Pandora will assist tackle this drawback by offering in-depth examine of a minimum of 20 exoplanets and their host stars throughout its preliminary 12 months. The satellite tv for pc will take a look at every planet and its star 10 instances, with every remark lasting a complete of 24 hours. Many of those worlds are among the many over 6,000 found by missions like NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).

Pandora will accumulate seen and near-infrared gentle utilizing a novel, all-aluminum 17-inch-wide (45-centimeter) telescope collectively developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Corning Specialty Materials in Keene, New Hampshire. Pandora’s near-infrared detector is a spare developed for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Each lengthy remark interval will seize a star’s gentle each earlier than and through a transit and assist decide how stellar floor options impression measurements.

Pandora is the primary satellite tv for pc to launch within the company’s Astrophysics Pioneers program, which seeks to do compelling astrophysics at a decrease price whereas coaching the following technology of leaders in area science.