--- title: "NASA Sending Adorable Little Buddy to Hang Out Next to the James Webb" description: "After spending a year and a half one million miles away from Earth, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is finally getting some company." date: "2023-06-13" modified: "2023-06-13" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/sidekick-cubesat-james-webb" categories: - "James Webb Space Telescope" - "NASA" - "Space" tags: - "cubesat" - "james webb space telescope" - "the digest" - "UV light" --- # NASA Sending Adorable Little Buddy to Hang Out Next to the James Webb ![After spending a year and a half one million miles away from Earth, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is finally getting some company.]() *\Image: University of Colorado Boulder\* ## Sidekick Energy After spending an exceedingly lonely year and a half peering into the universe roughly a million miles from the Earth, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is finally getting some company. The space agency recently selected a toaster-sized cubesat that will become the much bigger telescope's tiny, adorable "sidekick," according to a [statement](). NASA chose the $8.5 million space mission, called the "Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy" (MANTIS), which will be designed and built by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. The diminutive but mighty spacecraft, scheduled to launch sometime in 2026, will make observations of the night sky in the full range of ultraviolet light, including extreme UV (EUV) light, a more energetic form. These observations will help the cubesat study stars that burn dozens of light-years away from Earth, complementing the Webb's own [observations of exoplanets](). ## Webb Slinger MANTIS will fit right in, filling in the blanks for its much larger cousin. "We proposed MANTIS as a kind of ultraviolet sidekick that will follow JWST and look wherever it's looking, filling in this important piece of context on the stellar environments in which these planets live," said Kevin France, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and scientist on the MANTIS team, in the statement. Planets often release huge amounts of EUV as they are being blasted by radiation from their host star, a sign that they may be losing their atmosphere. But measuring this blast of radiation has proven difficult, and that's where MANTIS comes in. "For a lot of stars, this is going to be the first time we’ve seen what they look like in extreme ultraviolet," said David Wilson, who leads the mission’s science team at the University of Colorado, in the statement. And that means we could get a tantalizing glimpse of worlds that could harbor life. "We want to understand how this flux of UV light coming from stars affects the atmospheres of planets and even their habitability," said principal investigator Briana Indahl, also at the University of Colorado. **More on Webb:** *[James Webb Catches Saturn’s Moon Squirting]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()