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

May 2026 • 2026AJ....171..263R

Authors • Rotman, Yoav • McGill, Peter • Welbanks, Luis • Rackham, Benjamin V. • Iyer, Aishwarya • Apai, Dániel • Line, Michael R. • Quintana, Elisa V. • Dotson, Jessie L. • Colón, Knicole D. • Barclay, Thomas • Hedges, Christina • Rowe, Jason F. • Gilbert, Emily A. • Morris, Brett M. • Christiansen, Jessie L. • Foote, Trevor O. • Soto, Aylin García • Greene, Thomas P. • Hoffman, Kelsey • Hord, Benjamin J. • Kesseli, Aurora Y. • Kostov, Veselin B. • Mansfield, Megan Weiner • Wiser, Lindsey S.

Abstract • 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 H₂O and CH₄. 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.

Links

• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae4d3c
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04488