[NASA] NASA Awards Launch Service Task Order for Pandora Mission

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Credit: NASA

NASA has selected SpaceX of Starbase, Texas, to provide the launch service for the agency’s Pandora mission, which will study at least 20 known exoplanets and their host stars to find out how changes in stars affect our observations of exoplanet atmospheres.

The selection is part of NASA’s

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(VADR) launch services contract. This contract allows the agency to make fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity awards during VADR’s five-year ordering *******, with a maximum total value of $300 million across all contracts.

During its one-year primary mission,

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will observe each exoplanet 10 times, observing for 24 hours each visit. It will capture critical data about the planet and its host star during transits, an event where a planet crosses in front of the star it orbits.

The satellite will use an innovative 17-inch (45-centimeter)-wide all-aluminum telescope to simultaneously measure the visible and near-infrared brightness of the host star and obtain near-infrared spectra of the transiting planet. This will allow scientists to cleanly separate star and planetary signals, knowledge that will enhance observations from

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and future missions searching for habitable worlds, like the agency’s

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.

Pandora is a joint effort between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The

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program, from the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, funds Pandora and other astrophysics science missions using smaller, lower cost hardware and payloads. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contract.

To learn more about NASA’s Pandora mission, visit:

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-end-

Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
*****@*****.tld

Patti Bielling
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-501-7575
*****@*****.tld

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Last Updated

Feb 10, 2025

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