NASA will add a toaster-sized ‘sidekick’ to James Webb Space Telescope

The Webb telescope and the $8.5 million cubesat were chosen by NASA to work together to survey the universe in ultraviolet light. For more than a year, the largest space-based telescope, the Webb Space Telescope, has been making detailed observations of the furthest reaches of the cosmos. In order to aid Webb, NASA has chosen the Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uV Imaging and Spectroscopy (MANTIS), which will monitor the sky in the whole ultraviolet spectrum. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder is building the cubesat, which will be launched in 2026. The MANTIS mission will study the atmosphere of exoplanets by studying the radiation released by stars. The project is named after the aggressive shrimp that can see beyond the light spectrum that is visible to humans. Extreme ultraviolet light flares produced by stars have the potential to harm planets in their orbit.

The mission’s goal is to comprehend how this UV light flux influences planet atmospheres and even their habitability. MANTIS will investigate the factors that determine whether a star system is habitable or not by doing full-range ultraviolet observations. Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, a NASA spacecraft that operated from 1992 to 2001, was the final satellite to study this kind of light.