898-Pandora

Looking into a star filled sky at a place like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico inspires a person to wonder if our home planet is unique in the Universe. To begin to answer this question, NASA launched the small satellite Pandora on January 11, 2026 . It is on at least a one year long mission to study the chemical composition of more than 20 planets orbiting nearby stars in the Milky Way.The Pandora satellite’s results will hopefully include a list of potentially habitable planets to be observed the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe.