Cereal Box-Sized Satellite Shares First Images of Stars While Searching for Life on Exoplanets
A cereal box-sized telescope floating in Earth’s orbit has just taken its first ultraviolet images of nearby stars. These images represent a successful start for NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS), which recently embarked on a mission to study low-mass stars throughout the Milky Way.
The initial SPARCS observations are only the first of many to come, as the spacecraft will spend the next year monitoring flares and sunspot activity on low-mass stars. These stars, which are 30 to 70 percent the mass of our sun, are the most common in the Milky Way, supporting some 50 billion habitable-zone terrestrial planets across the entire galaxy. With fresh insights into low-mass stars, SPARCS may shed light on how these stars affect the habitability of exoplanets.
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A Strong Start for SPARCS
Stars observed Feb. 6 by the SPARCS space telescope simultaneously in the near-ultraviolet (left) and far-ultraviolet (right).
(Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
SPARCS was launched into low-Earth orbit on January 11, 2026, hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Only a month later, on February 6, its first images were received by scientists on Earth.
The images confirm that SPARCS’ camera is working as intended; this moment is especially important for SPARCS, since its observations require precise ultraviolet measurements, according to a press release.
“Seeing SPARCS’ first ultraviolet images from orbit is incredibly exciting. They tell us the spacecraft, the telescope, and the detectors are performing as tested on the ground, and we are ready to begin the science we built this mission to do,” said SPARCS principal investigator Evgenya Shkolnik, professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University, which leads the mission, in the press release.
Investigating Habitable Zones
Part of SPARCS’ appeal for a scientific mission is its small size; the spacecraft is a CubeSat, a class of nanosatellites used as a cost-effective approach to space research.
Despite its pint-sized proportions, SPARCS has a big mission ahead. According to a statement from NASA, it’s the first spacecraft “dedicated to continuously and simultaneously monitoring the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet radiation from low-mass stars for extended periods.”
SPARCS will focus on 20 low-mass stars, observing each target between one and three complete stellar rotations (durations of five to 45 days). Despite often appearing dimmer than our sun, low-mass stars flare more frequently, which could contribute to atmospheric loss on the exoplanets they host. Some of these planets may have liquid water and even potentially support life, if they are at the right distance from their host star.
To assess the potential conditions of exoplanets, SPARCS and other telescopes examine planets orbiting K type and M type dwarf stars; M dwarf stars make up 70 percent of all stars in the Milky Way and typically host rocky planets, although K dwarf stars appear to be more promising candidates for hosting potentially superhabitable planets due to their long lifespans (50 to 100 billion years), relatively low luminosities, and cooler temperature compared to stars like our sun, according to a study in Astronomical Notes.
Innovations in Ultraviolet Technology
SPARCS was built with innovative ultraviolet detection technologies, including metal-dielectric filters that could be directly deposited on the spacecraft’s UV detectors. According to NASA, the filters enable some of the most sensitive operations ever seen on a spacecraft like SPARCS.
“We took silicon-based detectors — the same technology as in your smartphone camera — and we created a high-sensitivity UV imager. Then we integrated filters into the detector to reject the unwanted light,” said Shouleh Nikzad, the lead developer of the SPARCS camera (called SPARCam) and the chief technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in the NASA statement. “That is a huge leap forward to doing big science in small packages, and SPARCS serves to demonstrate their long-term performance in space.”
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