NASA\u2019s Pandora satellite mission controllers received full acquisition of signal from the spacecraft on Jan. 11 on the first ground pass after liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Pandora will study planets outside our solar system – called exoplanets, discovered by other missions to gain information about the planets\u2019 atmospheres and how their stars may produce or affect the signals we detect from them.<\/p>\n
When a planet passes in front of its host star, substances in its atmosphere can absorb some of that light. Astronomers can measure these effects to determine the presence of specific elements and compounds. But the star can also produce the same signals, and activity on its surface can suppress or magnify those from the planet.<\/p>\n
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Also Read: What is a Star Tracker?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
Pandora will monitor the brightness of the exoplanet\u2019s host star in visible light while simultaneously collecting near-infrared data from both the star and the planet. It will study each system 10 times for 24 hours at a time. Together, these long multiwavelength observations will help separate the signals from the stars and the planets.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, leads Pandora for the agency. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provides project management and engineering for the mission. Pandora\u2019s telescope was manufactured by Corning and developed collaboratively with Livermore, which also developed the imaging detector assemblies, the mission\u2019s 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\u2019s Ames Research Center in California\u2019s Silicon Valley will perform the mission\u2019s data processing. Pandora\u2019s mission operations center is at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and a host of additional universities support the mission science team.<\/p>\n
NASA awarded the launch services for the Pandora mission through its VADR (Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) contract. NASA\u2019s Launch Services Program, based at the agency\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA\u2019s Pandora satellite mission controllers received full acquisition of signal from the spacecraft on Jan. 11 on the first ground pass after liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Pandora will study planets outside our solar system – called exoplanets, discovered by other missions to gain information about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26,25,20],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ground","tag-launch","tag-satellite"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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