Pandora: NASA’s new star watcher to sharpen exoplanet hunt with Webb

NASA’s Pandora exoplanet telescope, launched Jan 11, 2026, will monitor target stars for long periods to map stellar activity and starspots that can distort exoplanet transits, enabling a joint Webb–Pandora approach to study exoplanet atmospheres. Smaller than JWST but designed for repeated observations (about 200 hours per target across ten revisits over a year), Pandora will help separate stellar noise from planetary signals and will operate in low Earth orbit with eventual control shifting to the University of Arizona, accelerating the quest to identify potentially habitable worlds.