NASA Pandora Space Telescope Launch | SpaceX Falcon 9

NASA Pandora Space Telescope Launch | SpaceX Falcon 9

NASA’s Pandora space telescope satellite is in sun-synchronous orbit following separation of SpaceX’s second stage on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. A SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying Pandora, and several other payloads launched at 5:44 a.m. PST from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg, California.

Today, January 11, 2026, at 5:44 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST), NASA’s Pandora space telescope satellite was successfully launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission secured through the Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) launch services contract, managed by NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Pandora is now in sun-synchronous orbit, preparing to study planets and their respective host stars beyond our solar system.

This was the fifth flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission which previously launched Sentinel-6B and three Starlink missions.  Pandora is LSP's first launch of 2026!

Pandora will spend the next year conducting detailed observations of twenty exoplanets to determine whether any of their atmospheres contain water vapor, hazes, and clouds. It will simultaneously study their stars to discover whether they are producing or affecting the signals of those substances.

Two other NASA-sponsored CubeSats, Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) and Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT), also separated from the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage.

The agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) selected SPARCS in 2022 for a ride to orbit. The initiative is a low-cost pathway for conducting scientific investigations and technology demonstrations in space, enabling students, teachers, and faculty to gain hands-on experience with flight hardware design, development, and building. The CubeSat is manifested as part of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) 60 launch grouping.

Confirmation of signal acquisition from Pandora is the next expected milestone . . .

Pandora Mission Profile:
https://smallsat.wff.nasa.gov/missions/pandora.php

Learn about NASA's LSP:
https://www.nasa.gov/kennedy/launch-services-program/

Credit: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)

Release Date: Jan. 11, 2026

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