TUCSON, AZ (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 After years of planning, the University of Arizona\u2019s latest satellite is ready to blast off and study planets outside of our solar system.<\/p>\n
Scientists said Pandora was mounted this week inside the launch rocket, which is a SpaceX Falcon 9. The satellite, the size of a refrigerator, now waits for clear weather at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California when the launch window opens at 6:19 a.m. on Sunday. You can watch a livestream of the launch by clicking\/tapping here<\/a>.<\/p>\n UofA said Pandora will study the atmospheres of at least 20 planets orbiting distant stars, including to see if they have hazes, clouds and water. It\u2019ll stare at each of the planets and host stars for 24 hours at a time before moving on to the next and repeating the process for 10 observations for each system.<\/p>\n The satellite has a powerful telescope with an 18-inch mirror and specialized sensors that can \u201csplit\u201d light into its colors and measure how bright something is with great precision. That\u2019s how it\u2019ll analyze the chemical makeup of a star and the planets\u2019 atmospheres.<\/p>\n Pandora will help interpret data from previous missions like NASA\u2019s Kepler Space Telescope<\/a>, the agency\u2019s first planet-hunting mission, and ongoing missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a>, which is the largest telescope in space.<\/p>\n \u201cPandora opens a new chapter in exoplanet science, and it will guide future projects in their search for habitable worlds,\u201d Daniel Apai, the UofA lead of the mission and its exoplanet science team, said in a news release.<\/p>\n Once the satellite passes all its tests and reaches its orbit, UofA\u2019s Multi-Mission Operation Center<\/a> will run the mission.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time an orbiting astrophysics mission is operating from our new Mission Operations Center at the university,\u201d said Erika Hamden, director of the Arizona Space Institute. \u201cThe PHOENIX Mars Lander and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission were operated very successfully from the U of A, and now we\u2019re excited to continue that legacy with Pandora. We hope this represents just the first of many transformational NASA missions that ASI will operate out of the Advanced Research Building.\u201d <\/p>\n See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n