NASA's Pandora Launched on SpaceX Rideshare Mission

Teams prepare to encapsulate in early January 2026 NASA’s Pandora small satellite, and NASA-sponsored Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS), and Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT) CubeSat, inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing along with several other satellites at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, as part of the company’s Twilight mission. Pandora will provide an in-depth study of at least 20 known planets orbiting distant stars to determine the composition of their atmospheres — especially the presence of hazes, clouds, and water.