\n <\/p>\n
Pandora\u2019s launch marks a first for many of the scientists and engineers involved in the mission.<\/span>Credit: NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/span><\/p>\n On the morning of 11 January, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to send NASA\u2019s latest telescope into orbit. As the satellite, named Pandora, was released from its launch vehicle, \u201cwe were all in tears\u201d, says Ben Hord, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who\u2019s been working on the mission for about four years. \u201cIt\u2019s strange to see your co-workers cry, but in that moment, it just made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Pandora is the first satellite of NASA\u2019s Pioneers Program to ascend into space. There are four satellites among the seven current Pioneers missions, each with a budgetary cap of US$20 million \u2014 just a sliver of the funds typically awarded to flagship missions such as the $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The projects will address more-focused questions than larger missions; Pandora, for instance, will zero in on some 20 exoplanets and their host stars to learn more about the planets\u2019 atmospheres. <\/p>\n But for Hord and other team members, Pandora marks another first: it\u2019s the first spacecraft launch of their careers, a rite of passage for the up-and-coming team. Because of their smaller scales, the Pioneers missions present a wealth of opportunities for early-career researchers, and Pandora\u2019s staff list is scattered with recent graduates. A statement from the University of Arizona in Tucson \u2014 where mission operations are based \u2014 says that more than half of the mission\u2019s leading scientists and engineers are early in their careers. This is \u201creally unheard of elsewhere in the NASA mission space\u201d, Hord says. <\/p>\n Hord began working part-time for Pandora as a PhD student in 2022; this eventually led to a postdoctoral slot on the team. Working alongside more established mentors over the years, Hord says he\u2019s learnt what it takes to run a mission and has taken on more responsibilities than he ever anticipated along the way. \u201cI am in the room saying, \u2018No, we need to look at these planets if we want to meet our mission requirements\u2019,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople talk about having a seat at the table. I think that Pandora has taken a step further and helped early-career people be involved in choosing the menu of what we\u2019re eating at the table.\u201d<\/p>\n NASA exoplanet hunter racks up bizarre worlds and exploding stars<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Rae Holcomb, a postdoc at Goddard who also joined Pandora as a graduate student, worked with Hord and other early-career scientists to select the targets Pandora will focus on. By looking at each star and its exoplanets for lengthy, 24-hour stretches, the goal is to tease apart the chemical fingerprints of the planets and stars. Pandora will specifically help to determine whether planets have signs of hydrogen or water in their atmospheres. <\/p>\n \u201cThese are really essential operations. If we pick the wrong star to look at, we have to throw out that observation, and everything slows down,\u201d Holcomb says. \u201cBut nobody had any reservations about saying, \u2018You guys understand the mission. You understand the tools. In some cases, you understand them better than the rest of us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pandora\u2019s launch marks a first for many of the scientists and engineers involved in the mission.Credit: NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center On the morning of 11 January, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to send NASA\u2019s latest telescope into orbit. As the satellite, named Pandora, was released<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[22860,22859,1193,2378,1883,1695],"class_list":{"0":"post-43825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-earlycareer","9":"tag-feat","10":"tag-latest","11":"tag-leadership","12":"tag-nasas","13":"tag-telescope"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sorting starlight<\/h2>\n