NASA’s Pandora mission has started scientific observations of planets beyond our solar system, opening a new effort to answer one of the trickiest questions in exoplanet research: when scientists detect a signal that appears to come from a distant planet’s atmosphere, how can they be sure it is not actually coming from the star it orbits?
The small satellite will study at least 20 exoplanets and look for signs of clouds, hazes and water in their atmospheres. But Pandora’s mission is about more than simply finding those ingredients.
