Author: Naomi Hartono

Key Hardware for NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting NEO Surveyor Comes Home

NASA JPL cleanroom with space hardware and technicians.
In March, components for NASA’s NEO Surveyor, left, and the agency’s ASTHROS mission are seen sharing the same clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory while work continues on both missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Work on NASA’s purpose-built asteroid hunter, Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, is progressing toward a targeted late 2027 launch. A major component of the mission, the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure journeyed back to the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in early March after completing environmental testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Built at JPL, the angular 12-foot-long (3.7-meter-long) structure will protect the spacecraft’s infrared telescope and remove heat from it during space operations. Infrared telescopes essentially detect heat, so they need to be kept cool to avoid heat from the spacecraft interfering with observations.

As NASA’s first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor is sensitive to the heat emitted by near-Earth objects that are warmed by the Sun, allowing it to spot even those with dark surfaces. The observatory will use its infrared capabilities to detect and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose an impact hazard to Earth.

Over the course of several weeks at JPL, engineers and technicians will reinstall cables and finish taping the edges of the instrument enclosure’s composite panels in the historic High Bay 1 clean room of the lab’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility. The work is viewable via a live camera feed. Sharing the room with NEO Surveyor’s hardware is the telescope for NASA’s ASTHROS (Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths), an atmospheric balloon mission.

Once work wraps up on NEO Surveyor’s instrument enclosure, it’ll be sent to the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, where it will be joined together with another piece of key hardware: the telescope’s aluminum body, called the optical telescope assembly, which JPL also built. The telescope itself already left JPL earlier in the month, arriving at SDL on March 13.

The NEO Surveyor mission is led by Professor Amy Mainzer at UCLA for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and is being managed by JPL for the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, SDL, and Teledyne are among the companies that were contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder will support operations, and Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena, California, is responsible for producing some of the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about NEO Surveyor is available at:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/

Major Component of NASA’s NEO Surveyor Begins Test for Deep Space

A major element of NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor is undergoing testing at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Called the instrument enclosure, the angular structure measures 12 feet (3.7 meters) long and is designed to protect the spacecraft’s infrared telescope while also removing heat from it during operations in space.

After being built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the enclosure was shipped to NASA Johnson in November. The NEO Surveyor mission is targeting a late 2027-launch.

As NASA’s first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor will seek out, measure, and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth. While these near-Earth objects don’t reflect much visible light, they glow brightly in infrared light due to heating by the Sun.

But first, the mission needs to perform a series of tests on all the equipment to make sure it survives launch and performs as intended in the vacuum of space. To that end, a crew at NASA Johnson, led by NEO Surveyor contractor BAE Systems, has been exposing the enclosure to the frigid, airless conditions it will experience in deep space using the facility’s historic Chamber A. Part of Johnson’s Space Environment Simulation Laboratory, the cavernous thermal-vacuum facility tested the Apollo spacecraft that traveled to the Moon and, more recently, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s optical element and science instruments in 2017.

After testing, the enclosure will travel to the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah. There, it will be joined together with the telescope’s blocky aluminum body, called the optical bench, which JPL built and is currently testing.

JPL was within the mandatory evacuation zone for the Eaton Fire. Employees were instructed to work from home beginning Jan. 8, and most will continue to do so until Monday, Jan. 27. Updates on the laboratory’s status are being posted at emergency.jpl.nasa.gov. JPL facilities, labs, and hardware, including components for NEO Surveyor, were secured and protected by critical staff that remained on the property during the fire.

The NEO Surveyor mission is led by Survey Director Dr. Amy Mainzer at UCLA for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and is being developed by JPL under management of the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Aerospace and engineering companies have been contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation, including BAE Systems, SDL, and Teledyne. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder will support operations, and IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for processing survey data and producing the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about NEO Surveyor is available at:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/

News Media Contacts

Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov