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-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
[email protected]

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
[email protected] / [email protected]