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By NASA
Pandora, NASA’s newest exoplanet mission, is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems that will enable the mission to carry out its work.
Watch to learn more about NASA’s Pandora mission, which will revolutionize the study of exoplanet atmospheres.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center “This is a huge milestone for us and keeps us on track for a launch in the fall,” said Elisa Quintana, Pandora’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The bus holds our instruments and handles navigation, data acquisition, and communication with Earth — it’s the brains of the spacecraft.”
Pandora, a small satellite, will provide in-depth study of at least 20 known planets orbiting distant stars in order to determine the composition of their atmospheres — especially the presence of hazes, clouds, and water. This data will establish a firm foundation for interpreting measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and future missions that will search for habitable worlds.
Pandora’s spacecraft bus was photographed Jan. 10 within a thermal-vacuum testing chamber at Blue Canyon Technologies in Lafayette, Colorado. The bus provides the structure, power, and other systems that will enable the mission to help astronomers better separate stellar features from the spectra of transiting planets. NASA/Weston Maughan, BCT “We see the presence of water as a critical aspect of habitability because water is essential to life as we know it,” said Goddard’s Ben Hord, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow who discussed the mission at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland. “The problem with confirming its presence in exoplanet atmospheres is that variations in light from the host star can mask or mimic the signal of water. Separating these sources is where Pandora will shine.”
Funded by NASA’s Astrophysics Pioneers program for small, ambitious missions, Pandora is a joint effort between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and NASA Goddard.
“Pandora’s near-infrared detector is actually a spare developed for the Webb telescope, which right now is the observatory most sensitive to exoplanet atmospheres,” Hord added. “In turn, our observations will improve Webb’s ability to separate the star’s signals from those of the planet’s atmosphere, enabling Webb to make more precise atmospheric measurements.”
Astronomers can sample an exoplanet’s atmosphere when it passes in front of its star as seen from our perspective, an event called a transit. Part of the star’s light skims the atmosphere before making its way to us. This interaction allows the light to interact with atmospheric substances, and their chemical fingerprints — dips in brightness at characteristic wavelengths — become imprinted in the light.
But our telescopes see light from the entire star as well, not just what’s grazing the planet. Stellar surfaces aren’t uniform. They sport hotter, unusually bright regions called faculae and cooler, darker regions similar to sunspots, both of which grow, shrink, and change position as the star rotates.
An artist’s concept of the Pandora mission, seen here without the thermal blanketing that will protect the spacecraft, observing a star and its transiting exoplanet. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab Using a novel all-aluminum, 45-centimeter-wide (17 inches) telescope, jointly developed by Livermore and Corning Specialty Materials in Keene, New Hampshire, Pandora’s detectors will capture each star’s visible brightness and near-infrared spectrum at the same time, while also obtaining the transiting planet’s near-infrared spectrum. This combined data will enable the science team to determine the properties of stellar surfaces and cleanly separate star and planetary signals.
The observing strategy takes advantage of the mission’s ability to continuously observe its targets for extended periods, something flagship missions like Webb, which are in high demand, cannot regularly do.
Over the course of its year-long prime mission, Pandora will observe at least 20 exoplanets 10 times, with each stare lasting a total of 24 hours. Each observation will include a transit, which is when the mission will capture the planet’s spectrum.
Pandora is led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provides the mission’s project management and engineering. Pandora’s telescope was manufactured by Corning and developed collaboratively with Livermore, which also developed the imaging detector assemblies, the mission’s control electronics, and all supporting thermal and mechanical subsystems. The infrared sensor was provided by NASA Goddard. Blue Canyon Technologies provided the bus and is performing spacecraft assembly, integration, and environmental testing. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley will perform the mission’s data processing. Pandora’s mission operations center is located at the University of Arizona, and a host of additional universities support the science team.
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jan 16, 2025 Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Exoplanet Atmosphere Exoplanet Exploration Program Exoplanet Science Exoplanet Transits Exoplanets Goddard Space Flight Center Studying Exoplanets The Universe View the full article
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 4 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Tracks Down a ‘Blue Lurker’ Among Stars
Evolution of a “Blue Lurker” Star in a Triple System Credits:
NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI) The name “blue lurker” might sound like a villainous character from a superhero movie. But it is a rare class of star that NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope explored by looking deeply into the open star cluster M67, roughly 2,800 light-years away.
Forensics with Hubble data show that the star has had a tumultuous life, mixing with two other stars gravitationally bound together in a remarkable triple-star system. The star has a kinship to so-called “blue stragglers,” which are hotter, brighter, and bluer than expected because they are likely the result of mergers between stars.
Evolution of a “Blue Lurker” Star in a Triple System Panel 1: A triple star system containing three Sun-like stars. Two are very tightly orbiting. The third star has a much wider orbit. Panel 2: The close stellar pair spiral together and merge to form one more massive star. Panel 3: The merged star evolves into a giant star. As the huge photosphere expands, some of the material falls onto the outer companion, causing the companion to grow larger and its rotation rate to increase. Panels 4-5: The central merged star eventually burns out and forms a massive white dwarf, and the outer companion spirals in towards the white dwarf, leaving a binary star system with a tighter orbit. Panel 6: The surviving outer companion is much like our Sun but nicknamed a “blue lurker.” Although it is slightly brighter bluer than expected because of the earlier mass-transfer from the central star and is now rotating very rapidly, these features are subtle. The star could easily be mistaken for a normal Sun-like star despite its exotic evolutionary history. NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI) The blue lurker is spinning much faster than expected, an unusual behavior that led to its identification. Otherwise it looks like a normal Sun-like star. The term “blue” is a bit of a misnomer because the star’s color blends in with all the other solar-mass stars in the cluster. Hence it is sort of “lurking” among the common stellar population.
The spin rate is evidence that the lurker must have siphoned in material from a companion star, causing its rotation to speed up. The star’s high spin rate was discovered with NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope. While normal Sun-like stars typically take about 30 days to complete one rotation, the lurker takes only four days.
How the blue lurker got that way is a “super complicated evolutionary story,” said Emily Leiner of Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. “This star is really exciting because it’s an example of a star that has interacted in a triple-star system.” The blue lurker originally rotated more slowly and orbited a binary system consisting of two Sun-like stars.
Around 500 million years ago, the two stars in that binary merged, creating a single, much more massive star. This behemoth soon swelled into a giant star, dumping some of its own material onto the blue lurker and spinning it up in the process. Today, we observe that the blue lurker is orbiting a white dwarf star — the burned out remains of the massive merger.
“We know these multiple star systems are fairly common and are going to lead to really interesting outcomes,” Leiner explained. “We just don’t yet have a model that can reliably connect through all of those stages of evolution. Triple-star systems are about 10 percent of the Sun-like star population. But being able to put together this evolutionary history is challenging.”
Hubble observed the white dwarf companion star that the lurker orbits. Using ultraviolet spectroscopy, Hubble found the white dwarf is very hot (as high as 23,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly three times the Sun’s surface temperature) and a heavyweight at 0.72 solar masses. According to theory, hot white dwarfs in M67 should be only about 0.5 solar masses. This is evidence that the white dwarf is the byproduct of the merger of two stars that once were part of a triple-star system.
“This is one of the only triple systems where we can tell a story this detailed about how it evolved,” said Leiner. “Triples are emerging as potentially very important to creating interesting, explosive end products. It’s really unusual to be able to put constraints on such a system as we are exploring.”
Leiner’s results are being presented at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
Emily Leiner
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL
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Last Updated Jan 13, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Open Clusters Stars Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
LMS instrument aboard the Blue Ghost Lander heading to Mare Crisium in mid-January
As part of its Artemis campaign, NASA is developing a series of increasingly complex lunar deliveries and missions to ultimately build a sustained human presence at the Moon for decades to come. Through the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, commercial provider Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander will head to the Moon’s Mare Crisium for a 14-day lunar lander mission, carrying NASA science and technology that will help understand the lunar subsurface in a previously unexplored location.
From within the Mare Crisium impact basin, the SwRI-led Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) may provide the first geophysical measurements representative of the bulk of the Moon. Most of the Apollo missions landed in the region of linked maria to the west (left image), whose crust was later shown to be compositionally distinct (right image) as exemplified by the concentration of the element thorium. Mare Crisium provides a smooth landing site on the near side of the Moon outside of this anomalous region. NASA Developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NASA’s Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) will probe the interior of the Moon to depths of up to 700 miles, two-thirds of the way to the lunar center. The measurements will shed light on the differentiation and thermal history of our Moon, a cornerstone to understanding the evolution of solid worlds.
Magnetotellurics uses natural variations in surface electric and magnetic fields to calculate how easily electricity flows in subsurface materials, which can reveal their composition and structure.
“For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotellurics on Earth for a wide variety of purposes, including to find oil, water, and geothermal and mineral resources, as well as to understand geologic processes such as the growth of continents,” said SwRI’s Dr. Robert Grimm, principal investigator of LMS. “The LMS instrument will be the first extraterrestrial application of magnetotellurics.”
Mare Crisium is an ancient, 350-mile-diameter impact basin that subsequently filled with lava, creating a dark spot visible on the Moon from Earth. Early astronomers who dubbed dark spots on the moon “maria,” Latin for seas, mistook them for actual seas.
Mare Crisium stands apart from the large, connected areas of dark lava to the west where most of the Apollo missions landed. These vast, linked lava plains are now thought to be compositionally and structurally different from the rest of the Moon. From this separate vantage point, LMS may provide the first geophysical measurements representative of most of the Moon.
The Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) will probe the interior of the Moon to depths of up to 700 miles or two-thirds of the lunar radius. The measurements will shed light on the differentiation and thermal history of our Moon, a cornerstone to understanding the evolution of solid worlds.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The LMS instrument ejects cables with electrodes at 90-degree angles to each other and distances up to 60 feet. The instrument measures voltages across opposite pairs of electrodes, much like the probes of a conventional voltmeter. The magnetometer is deployed via an extendable mast to reduce interference from the lander. The magnetotelluric method reveals a vertical profile of the electrical conductivity, providing insight into the temperature and composition of the penetrated materials in the lunar interior.
“The five individual subsystems of LMS, together with connecting cables, weigh about 14 pounds and consume about 11 Watts of power,” Grimm said. “While stowed, each electrode is surrounded by a ‘yarn ball’ of cable, so the assembly is roughly spherical and the size of a softball.”
The LMS payload was funded and will be delivered to the lunar surface through NASA’s CLPS initiative. Southwest Research Institute based in San Antonio built the central electronics and leads the science investigation. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided the LMS magnetometer to measure the magnetic fields, and Heliospace Corp. provided the electrodes used to measure the electrical fields.
Under the CLPS model, NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the Moon to enable industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration. As a primary customer for CLPS deliveries, NASA aims to be one of many customers on future flights. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the development of seven of the 10 CLPS payloads carried on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander.
Media Contact: Rani Gran
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
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Last Updated Jan 10, 2025 EditorRob GarnerContactRani GranLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Earth's Moon Goddard Space Flight Center View the full article
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