#USA #Washington #NASA #SpaceX #NEO Surveyor

NASA Chooses SpaceX for the NEO Surveyor Mission Launch

NASA has made a significant move in planetary defense by selecting SpaceX, based in Starbase, Texas, to handle launch services for the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission. This groundbreaking mission is aimed at detecting asteroids and comets that may endanger Earth.

The launch contract, part of NASA's Launch Services II program, is valued at approximately $100 million. This includes the launch itself and various mission-related expenses. The NEO Surveyor is expected to take off no sooner than September 2027 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, utilizing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The NEO Surveyor mission will feature a powerful telescope, nearly 20 inches in diameter, designed to operate in two infrared wavelengths. With this unique capability, the telescope seeks to identify both bright asteroids and the more elusive dark ones, which are notoriously hard to detect using current technologies.

This initiative aligns with NASA’s ongoing efforts in planetary defense, aiming to discover and characterize most of the near-Earth objects (NEOs) that come within 30 million miles of our planet’s orbit. The NEO Surveyor will begin with a five-year baseline survey intended to locate at least two-thirds of previously unknown NEOs greater than 140 meters (approximately 460 feet) in size. These larger bodies could cause significant regional damage should they collide with Earth.

The telescope will leverage two heat-sensitive infrared imaging channels to provide more precise measurements of the NEOs, enhancing our understanding of their size, composition, shape, rotation states, and orbits.

NASA's Planetary Science Division, part of the Science Mission Directorate, at their headquarters in Washington, is leading the mission. The program management falls under NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, established in 2016 to oversee the agency's planetary defense strategies. Additional oversight comes from NASA's Planetary Missions Program Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, while the mission is developing through NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Southern California.

For the mission's spacecraft and instruments, NASA has partnered with various aerospace and engineering companies, including BAE Systems, Space Dynamics Laboratory, and Teledyne. Collaborative efforts involve the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which will assist with operations. Processing of the survey data and production of the mission's outputs will be managed by the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California.

Leadership for the mission team will come from the University of California, Los Angeles. Managing the launch service is NASA's Launch Services Program based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For those interested in the NEO Surveyor, detailed information is available on NASA's site: NASA NEO Surveyor Mission. This mission not only enhances our ability to foresee potential threats from space but also signifies a major advancement in NASA’s long-term goals for planetary defense.