NEO Surveyor
A planned telescope built to find most of the near-Earth asteroids large enough to devastate a region.
Key facts
- Agency
- NASA (United States)
- Type of mission
- Infrared space telescope
- Target
- Near-Earth asteroids and comets
- Launched
- Planned for 2027
- Status
- In development
Astronomers have found almost all near-Earth asteroids larger than a kilometre, the size that could cause a global catastrophe, and none of them is on course to hit Earth. Smaller ones are a different matter. An asteroid 140 metres across could devastate a region if it struck, and fewer than half of those are thought to have been found.
A telescope for the job
NEO Surveyor, the Near-Earth Object Surveyor, is being built for exactly this search. Like NEOWISE before it, it will look in infrared light, in which dark asteroids glow from the Sun's warmth. It will be placed at the L1 point, about 1.5 million kilometres towards the Sun, and look out to either side of the Sun's direction. That lets it see asteroids that approach Earth from the daytime side, which ground telescopes miss, the direction from which the Chelyabinsk meteor arrived in 2013.
Over its planned survey of at least five years, it is designed to find about two-thirds of the near-Earth objects larger than 140 metres, and to measure their sizes.
Why it matters to meteorites
Nearly all meteorites come from near-Earth asteroids and the fragments that break off them. A fuller census will show how these bodies are distributed and how often larger impacts happen. The discoveries carry no cause for alarm: finding asteroids early is what gives time to study, and if ever needed deflect, one.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2027 | Planned launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
NEO Surveyor will be able to spot asteroids from their heat even when they are as dark as charcoal.
The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteoroid came from the direction of the Sun, where no telescope could see it.