There is a new NASA mission called “Pandora,” which is a new space telescope that will help NASA study exo-planets more accurately. It is also a backup for the James Webb Space Telescope. The JWST has a very thin gold layer to increase its reflectivity of infrared light, allowing it to see distant galaxies, nebulas, black holes and planets.
The Webb Telescope, launched in 2021, has the sensitivity to peer into distant planetary systems and detect the telltale chemical fingerprints of molecules critical to or indicative of potential life, like water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane. Webb can do this while also observing the oldest observable galaxies in the universe and studying planets, moons, and smaller objects within our own Solar System. The James Webb Space Telescope also had a budget of 10 billion dollars, 500 times more than the Pandora telescope, with its budget capped around 20 million dollars.
The Pandora telescope is about the size of a refrigerator and weighs around 716 pounds. Pandora will observe exo-planets and their stars simultaneously, allowing astronomers to correct their measurements of the planet’s atmospheric composition and structure based on the ever-changing conditions of the host star itself. The James Webb Space Telescope could theoretically do this work, but scientists already fill every hour of Webb’s schedule. Pandora will point and stare at 20 preselected exoplanets 10 times during its one-year prime mission, collecting 24 hours of visible and infrared observations with each visit. This will capture short-term and longer-term changes in each star’s behavior.
Over the next few weeks, ground controllers will put Pandora through a series of commissioning and calibration steps before turning its eyes toward deep space. Pandora is a fraction of the size of Webb. Its primary mirror is about the size of the largest consumer-grade amateur telescopes, less than one-tenth the dimension of Webb’s. It helps to understand how scientists use Webb to study exoplanets. When a planet passes in front of its parent star, some of the starlight shines through its atmosphere. Webb has the sensitivity to detect the filtered starlight and break it apart into its spectral components, telling astronomers about the composition of clouds and hazes in the planet’s atmosphere. Ultimately, the data is useful in determining whether an exoplanet might be like Earth. The JWST is able to take pictures of exo-planets and nebulas so NASA is able to study their atmosphere, but they want to study it more accurately and correctly, so the Pandora telescope helps NASA study exo-planets more accurately and correctly.
