Enabling development of early career scientists and technologists while implementing a space mission: Pandora's approach

The Pandora SmallSat mission is a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers mission whose goal is to assess the impact of stellar activity on exoplanet transmission spectroscopy. A secondary goal of both the Pioneers program and the Pandora mission is to provide space mission experience to early career participants with a range of expertise including scientists, engineers, and project managers. Pandora is facilitating the involvement of early career participants from undergrad to post-grad through a variety of formal and informal programs including summer internships, year long graduate student shadow opportunities, post-doctoral programs, and formal mission roles. The success of early career participants within the mission is enabled by pairing them with mentors as well as the identification and assignment of responsibilities that match their capabilities with mission needs. In addition, the Pandora mission leadership team developed and established rules of conduct to set clear expectations for all mission participants. We will discuss the details of these programs, lessons learned, and summarize the best practices Pandora has developed which enable us to contribute to the pipeline of scientists and technologists with space mission experience (while simultaneously developing a SmallSat mission).