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The exoplanet census continues to grow. Currently, 5,819 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,346 star systems, while thousands more await confirmation. The vast majority of these planets were detected in the past twenty years, owing to missions like the Kepler Space Telescope<\/em>, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite<\/em> (TESS), the venerable Hubble<\/em>, the Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits<\/em> (CoRoT) mission, and more. Thousands more are expected as the James Webb Space Telescope<\/em> continues its mission and is joined by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope<\/em> (RST).<\/p>\n In the meantime, astronomers will soon have another advanced observatory to help search for potentially habitable exoplanets. It\u2019s called Pandora, a small satellite that was selected in 2021 as part of NASA\u2019s call for Pioneer mission concepts. This observatory is designed to study planets detected by other missions by studying these planets\u2019 atmospheres of exoplanets and the activity of their host stars with long-duration multiwavelength observations. The mission is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Funded by NASA\u2019s Astrophysics Pioneers, Pandora is a joint effort between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. The mission will study planets detected by other observatories that rely on Transit Photometry (aka. the Transit Method), where astronomers monitor stars for periodic dips in brightness that indicate the presence of orbiting planets. Pandora will then monitor these planets for future transits and obtain spectra from their atmospheres \u2013 a process known as Transit Spectroscopy.<\/p>\n \n