NEO Surveyor
NEO Surveyor is a planned NASA infrared space telescope designed to find most of the hazardous near-Earth asteroids.
NEO Surveyor, the Near-Earth Object Surveyor, is a NASA space telescope planned to launch around 2027. It will observe in infrared light from a point about 1.5 million kilometres sunward of Earth, looking for asteroids and comets that come close to our planet.
Infrared light is useful because asteroids, even very dark ones, glow with heat. Visible-light telescopes see only reflected sunlight, so dark asteroids can be missed or their sizes misjudged. Infrared measurements give much better size estimates.
The mission's goal is to find at least two-thirds of the near-Earth objects larger than 140 metres within five years, an important step towards a target set by the United States Congress in 2005 of finding 90 per cent of them. Objects of that size could devastate a region if they struck. Knowing about them decades ahead would give time for a deflection mission like DART if one were ever needed.
Related terms
Level: Expert Advanced