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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
 
 

Today we’re taking a step away from Earth. We’re shifting focus to the science of space, and one mission happening right now that researchers hope will mean that atmospheric conditions on exoplanets can be studied in a meaningful way – and maybe we can learn more about our planet while we’re out there.
 
 

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
 
 
 

 
 
 
  1. Global co-operation: Trump pulls U.S. out of 66 international organizations, including UN climate treaty
  2. Water: Northern Ontario First Nation begins evacuation amid critical issues with water treatment plant
  3. Opinion: Addressing the health impacts of plastics is becoming more urgent, writes André Picard
  4. Agriculture: Canadian agtech firm using AI to help swine, chicken farmers keep track of animal feed
  5. Home of the week: An eco-friendly home on Nova Scotia’s Mahone Bay with a giant-sized dock
  6. Food and drink: How one of Spain’s top winemakers is preparing for wine’s future
 
 

 
 
 
 
Illustrators can only imagine the surface of L 98-59 b, a rocky exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star, but NASA’s new Pandora mission hopes to get more evidence to deduce what’s really out there. Science Photo Library/Reuters
 
 
 
 

For this week’s deeper dive, a look at the research that is studying the environment of other planets – and one project that can help us learn about our own.
 
 

A NASA mission just recently hit the space waves with the purpose to help answer one of the biggest mysteries of all: Is there life out there?
 
 

Pandora is a satellite built to analyze the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars. It hitched a ride to space on Sunday aboard a Space X rocket.

 
 

The question of life on other worlds has become a serious area of research, writes science reporter Ivan Semeniuk. Over the past 30 years technology has enabled the detection of thousands of such exoplanets far outside our solar system.
 
 

Up until now astronomers (and even the mighty James Webb Space Telescope) faced a barrier that makes it difficult to say with confidence what these distant worlds are like – the data about other planets is often hard to separate from the busy and unpredictable flickering of the stars those planet orbit.

 
 

One important piece of information that can be affected in this way is whether or not a planet’s atmosphere contains water and other molecules that are necessary for life.
 
 
 
One of Pandora’s spheres of interest is WASP-69b, a Jupiter-like ‘tadpole planet’ with a tail of gas. Reuters
 
 

Pandora is a surprisingly small spacecraft. In orbit, the microwave oven-sized machine will essentially operate as a solar-powered telescope, equipped to perceive its targets in a way that no other exoplanet mission can.
 
 

Today, Jason Rowe, a Canadian science team member with Pandora and professor at Bishop’s University said that the probe appears to be in good health after communications were established overnight.
 
 

Also hitching a ride on the same flight yesterday was Toronto-based aerospace company Kepler Communications Inc. which has pioneered the use of optical communications in space. They launched 10 satellites, making it operator of the largest fleet of Canadian-built spacecraft to date.
 
 

Kepler aims to improve real-time awareness of conditions around the globe. The satellites’ AI-powered processing enables the information to be assessed and transmitted in real time, with the optical communication links between them enabling continuous coverage.
 
 

One example of application? According to Mina Mitry, Kepler’s chief executive officer, the satellites carry a client’s thermal imagers that can scan the landscape below to detect and monitor the development of wildfires.