NASA's SPARCS

NASA's Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) has captured its first images, marking a significant milestone in the mission to study the energetic lives of low-mass stars. The spacecraft, roughly the size of a large cereal box, will monitor flares and sunspot activity on these stars, which are among the most common in the Milky Way and host the majority of the galaxy's habitable-zone terrestrial planets.

The SPARCS spacecraft is the first dedicated to continuously and simultaneously monitoring the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet radiation from low-mass stars for extended periods. Over its one-year mission, SPARCS will target approximately 20 low-mass stars and observe them over durations of five to 45 days.

The mission takes advantage of advances in computational processing, with an onboard computer that can perform data processing and intelligently adjust the observation parameters to better sample the development of flares as they happen.