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Exoplanet Observing Satellite

NASA’s Pandora space telescope satellite and the NASA-sponsored BlackCAT and SPARCS missions lifted off at 8:44 a.m. EST on Jan. 11. The small satellite is designed to characterize exoplanet atmospheres and their host stars and is slated to observe at least 20 different planets.

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Pandora

observing gamma ray bursts

BlackCAT

monitoring low-mass stars

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Return to the Moon

Four astronauts will venture around the Moon on Artemis II, the first crewed mission on NASA's path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for science and exploration through Artemis. 

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Mars to Table

NASA is launching the Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table, a new global competition inviting chefs, innovators, culinary experts, higher-education students, and citizen scientists to design a complete, Earth-independent food system for long-duration space missions.

Deep Space Food Challenge about Mars to Table
This illustration of Moon to Mars infrastructure shows astronauts living and working on the surface of Mars. NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives establish an objectives-based approach to the agency's human deep space exploration efforts; NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture approach distills the objectives into operational capabilities and elements.

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NASA’s Pandora Small Satellite Launched

NASA’s Pandora small satellite, and NASA-sponsored Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS), and Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT) CubeSat, are ready to be encapsulated inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing in this early January 2026 photo. Pandora and the CubeSats launched Sunday, Jan. 11, from Vandenberg Space Force Base located on California’s central coast.

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