![In order to select our final Prime Mission targets, we plotted each target in our long list to show the range of planet radius and stellar host effective temperatures covered. We selected the top 10 gaseous (above 1.9 R⊕) and top 10 terrestrial (below 1.9 R⊕) targets to be our 20 Prime Mission targets, as indicated by the black ringed points. An additional 20 targets were selected as Secondary Targets as backups to the Prime Mission targets, shown with red rings. -- [astro-ph.IM]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/The-Pandora.png?fit=1200%2C674&ssl=1)
[astro-ph.IM]. The Pandora spacecraft is a smallsat selected in NASA’s inaugural class of Pioneers missions.
The aim of the Pandora mission is to disentangle stellar activity signals from exoplanet atmospheric transmission spectroscopy measurements. Pandora accomplishes this goal with its combined visible photometry and NIR spectroscopy that observe each target in the prime mission for 10 separate transit observations, each spanning 24 hours at a time.
Targets were carefully selected for the Pandora prime mission. Pandora is specifically studying planets around low-mass stellar hosts (K and M dwarf stars) spanning a range of rotation periods and activity levels.
The planets range in size from 1.5 – 15 Earth radii and orbital periods ranging from 1.7 – 11.5 days. In addition to the 10 transit visits planned for each of the 20 prime mission targets, Pandora is observing a number of auxiliary targets encompassing a variety of science topics.
This includes topics such as stellar activity and young systems, transit timing variations of exoplanets, brown dwarf compositions, exoplanet phase curves, etc. We will discuss the selection of these targets, how they have been scheduled to fill in gaps in prime mission operations, and early science results.
If the mission is extended, there is further opportunity for accomplishing additional science. Here we will discuss the possible options for extended mission operations and science.
Emily A. Gilbert, Elisa V. Quintana, Jessie L. Dotson, Knicole D. Colón, Thomas Barclay, Pete Supsinskas, Jordan Karburn, Dániel Apai, Christina Hedges, Benjamin V. Rackham, Jason F. Rowe, David Ciardi, Natalie H. Allen, Jessie Christiansen, Néstor Espinoza, Trevor O. Foote, Nguyen Fuda, Aylin Garcia Soto, Thomas P. Greene, Kelsey Hoffman, Rae Holcomb, Benjamin J. Hord, Aishwarya R. Iyer, Aurora Y. Kesseli, Veselin B. Kostov, Nikole K. Lewis, Sarah E. Logsdon, Andrew W. Mann, Megan Mansfield, James Mason, Peter McGill, Julie Moquin, Brett M. Morris, Gregory Mosby, Susan E. Mullallym, Elisabeth R. Newton, Joe P. Renaud, Yoav Rotman, Suman Saha, Joshua E. Schlieder, Luis Welbanks, Lindsey S. Wiser, Allison Youngblood, Robert T. Zellem
Comments: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; paper published as proceedings of the SPIE
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2610.30028 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2610.30028v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.30028
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Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3104260
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Submission history
From: Emily Gilbert
[v1] Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:52:20 UTC (6,369 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30028
Astrobiology, Exoplanet,
