Small Satellite Missions

NASA’s Arcstone instrument, designed to improve the accuracy of lunar calibration, successfully completed its technology demonstration, and now begins extended operations.   Arcstone launched on June 23 on a SpaceX Transporter-14 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on a six-month mission to measure light reflected by the Moon, which is a stable and potentially highly-accurate calibration source, for satellite sensors.  The mission, led by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, uses a specially designed spectrometer system and is the first on-orbit instrument solely dedicated […]

NASA’s Pandora satellite mission controllers received full acquisition of signal from the spacecraft on Jan. 11 on the first ground pass after liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Pandora will study planets outside our solar system – called exoplanets – discovered by other missions to gain information […]

NASA’s Pandora space telescope satellite is in sun-synchronous orbit, preparing to study planets and their respective host stars beyond our solar system. Pandora will spend the next year conducting detailed observations of 20 exoplanets to determine whether any of their atmospheres contain water vapor, hazes, and clouds. It will simultaneously study their stars to discover […]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s Pandora small satellite lifted off at 5:44 a.m. PST Sunday, Jan. 11, from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base located on California’s central coast. In addition to Pandora, the rocket carried dozens of satellites, including two CubeSats sponsored by NASA, SPARCS (Star-Planet Activity Research […]

Editor’s Note: This media advisory was updated Jan. 12, 2026 to correct the description of the SPARCS CubeSat. NASA’s Pandora small satellite is preparing to launch to low Earth orbit, where it will study exoplanet atmospheres and their stars. Pandora is part of the Twilight rideshare mission with SpaceX and is set to launch aboard […]

SpaceX is targeting a 57-minute launch window that opens at 8:19 a.m. EST (5:19 a.m. PST) Sunday, Jan. 11, from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California for launch of its Twilight commercial rideshare mission that includes NASA’s Pandora small satellite. A live webcast of this mission will begin about […]

A NASA small satellite is set to launch on a commercial rideshare mission to test rapid, low-cost deployment of multiple technology prototypes in low Earth orbit, along with three other NASA funded small-scale satellites.   The R5-S7 (Realizing Rapid, Reduced-cost high-Risk Research project Spacecraft 7) CubeSat, developed by NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, is […]

A NASA mission that studied the interior of hurricanes collected its final data on Nov. 12, as the last two CubeSats in its fleet were powered down prior to re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.  The TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) mission originally consisted of four identical, milk carton-sized satellites that […]

NASA continues to study how autonomy will assist future exploration to the Moon, Mars, and other worlds. As exploration continues to evolve, future spacecraft swarms will one day “see” and communicate with each other autonomously, navigating new destinations more efficiently. The success of NASA’s Starling mission extension, called Starling 1.5+, shows greater autonomy in space […]

Payload commissioning is underway for NASA’s PExT (Polylingual Experimental Terminal), a first-of-its-kind space communications demonstration designed to allow spacecraft to communicate with government and commercial networks. After launching on July 23, York Space Systems established first contact with their Bard satellite, the host spacecraft for PExT, and began bus commissioning on schedule. Over the next […]