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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

NASA’s Pandora SmallSat Mission: Simulated Modeling and Retrieval of Near-infrared Exoplanet Transmission Spectra

Pandora is a SmallSat mission dedicated to understanding exoplanets and their host stars by disentangling the impact of stellar heterogeneity on exoplanet transmission spectra. Selected as a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers mission in 2021, Pandora will provide simultaneous long-term visible photometric monitoring (0.4–0.7 μm) and low-resolution near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy (0.9–1.6 μm) of transiting systems for the purposes of monitoring host star variability and characterizing exoplanetary atmospheres. Pandora’s year-long prime mission from 2026 to 2027 coincides with the middle of a decade defined by targeted efforts for atmospheric characterization of exoplanets, offering a key opportunity to leverage this new resource to maximize science with JWST and other observatories. Here we investigate Pandora’s anticipated performance for the general exoplanet population accessible to transit spectroscopy, from hot Jupiters to temperate sub-Neptunes. By modeling the atmospheres of five test cases broadly consistent with the bulk properties of HD 209458b, HD 189733b, WASP-80 b, HAT-P-18 b, and K2-18 b, we find that Pandora may provide abundance constraints as precise as ∼1.0 dex for main atmospheric absorbers such as H 2 O and CH 4 . Then, we explore the synergies between Pandora and JWST. Our results suggest that targets with JWST data in the NIR can benefit from the addition of Pandora observations and result in more reliable abundance estimates than with JWST data alone. Moreover, Pandora can serve the community by providing precursory observations of targets of interest for JWST atmospheric characterization. We conclude by outlining strategies for the use of Pandora as a standalone observatory and in synergy with JWST.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

NASA’s Pandora SmallSat Mission: Simulating the Impact of Stellar Photospheric Heterogeneity and Its Correction

Stellar photospheric heterogeneity is a dominant astrophysical systematic impacting exoplanet transmission spectroscopy. NASA’s Pandora SmallSat Mission is designed to address this challenge through contemporaneous visible-band photometry and near-infrared spectroscopy of exoplanet host stars. Here, we present an end-to-end simulation study quantifying Pandora’s ability to infer stellar photospheric properties and correct stellar contamination using out-of-transit observations. We construct eight representative stellar activity scenarios and generate 160 simulated Pandora datasets, incorporating time-dependent stellar spectra, instrument response, and noise. Given accurate models, Bayesian retrievals of joint visible photometry (0.4–0.7 μm) and near-infrared spectroscopy (0.9–1.6 μm, R ≈ 120) recover photospheric temperatures with typical uncertainties of ≈30 K, with no significant bias. Models with two spectral components (i.e., a quiescent photosphere and spots) are strongly favored in 95% of cases; one-component models are preferred when true spot filling factors fall below a detection threshold of ≈0.3%. We propagate the true and inferred stellar parameters to compute true, inferred, and residual contamination signals under physically motivated spot geometries. For simple spot distributions, contamination signals of 10 2 –10 3 ppm are reduced to ≲10 ppm—well below Pandora’s expected transmission spectroscopy precision (30–100 ppm). For more complex spot distributions, geometric degeneracies limit deterministic corrections, leaving residual contamination at the 10 3 ppm level that must be mitigated using additional constraints, such as spot-crossing events and joint stellar–planetary retrievals of transmission spectra. These results define regimes in which stellar contamination can be corrected from stellar observations alone and show how Pandora stellar observations can identify cases where additional information is required.

Astronomy and AstroPhysics↗