The Pandora SmallSat: status and design updates

Transmission spectroscopy of transiting exoplanets provides our best opportunity to identify the makeup of planetary atmospheres in the coming decade. However, stellar surface brightness inhomogeneities due to features such as star spots, can impact these measurements and contaminate the observed spectra. The Pandora SmallSat mission is designed to disentangle star and planet signals in transmission spectra to reliably determine exoplanet atmosphere compositions. Pandora has long-duration, multiwavelength (visible and NIR) capabilities, and will observe a wide range of star types (mid-K to late-M) and planet sizes (Earth- to Jupiter-size). During the past year we have increased the fidelity of the mission design and updated the expected science performance models. These updates show Pandora is on track to meet requirements and be ready for launch in the mid-2020s.