It's happening!!! Pandora is going to space in just over 16 hours (if all goes well). Pandora is going to help us study exoplanet atmospheres, even when their host stars are misbehaving. I am headed up to Vandenberg to watch the launch shortly, and will make a thread about the mission/launch here!

I've been working on Pandora Science for 5+ years in a variety of roles ranging from Graduate Student Shadow to now serving as the Associate Project Scientist. I am SO EXCITED to finally see this mission go to space.

Pandora was selected as a part of NASA's inaugural class of Pioneers missions. This is a $20M cost cap program meant to do new and exciting science for a fraction of the price of a flagship mission. See the initial press release from selection here! science.nasa.gov/astrophysics...

Cue frantic scrambling to pack and throw things in the car…

Anddd we’re off! Starting the mini road trip to Vandenberg. I’ll post more about Pandora science at pit stops along the way!

Ok I failed on the pit stops... But I made it to Lompoc and we are now targeting a 5:44 AM Pacific launch! You can livestream it here: www.spacex.com/launches

Pandora will study exoplanet atmospheres using a technique called transmission spectroscopy. We look at a planet's host star, and as the planet transits (passing between us and the star) the starlight filters through the planet's atmosphere.

This gives us a combined measurement of the spectrum of the star and planet. In a perfect world, you should be able to subtract off the star's spectrum and be left with just the planet's spectrum. But stars are always well-behaved.

Stars are don't have nice, uniform surfaces. Irregularities from things like starspots can affect our ability to interpret planet spectra. And this is where Pandora comes in!

Pandora has an observing strategy dedicated to sussing out these stellar irregularities. In the Prime Mission, we are going to observe 20 different exoplanets, obtaining 10 separate transit observations of each, with each observation spanning 24 hours in duration.

These repeat visits and long baselines will allow us to study how the host stars change over time and separate the star and planet signals.

🥱 we’re up! It’s early! Pandora goes to space today!!!

Pandora PI, Elisa Quintana, giving us a quick speech before launch!

And we’re sharing a ride with our friends on SPARCS, led by PI Evgenya Shkolnik!

The rocket today is called Twilight because we are headed to a dawn/dusk orbit in LEO (low earth orbit). This is an orbit ~along the terminator between day and night. I will keep making vampire jokes!

When I worked at Planet Labs, we had a launch day tradition of making pancakes for good luck. I was worried about how to make pancakes for this one so my mom sent me a care package for making pancakes on the go 🥞

I take launch day traditions VERY seriously