WASHINGTON — NASA picked SpaceX for the launch of a space telescope dedicated to searching for near Earth objects.
NASA announced Feb. 21 it awarded a task order through the NASA Launch Services II contract for the launch of the Near Earth Orbit (NEO) Surveyor spacecraft on a Falcon 9. That task order is valued at approximately $100 million, the agency stated.
NEO Surveyor will launch on a Falcon 9 from Florida as soon as September 2027. It will operate from the Earth-sun L-1 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction of the sun.
The spacecraft will feature a telescope 50 centimeters in diameter equipped with infrared detectors. That instrument will allow NEO Surveyor to detect near Earth objects and determine both their orbits and their sizes. The mission has a goal of detecting two-thirds of the NEOs at least 140 meters across in five years, and a congressionally mandated goal of 90% of such objects in 10 to 12 years.
The launch contract came just after the $1.2 billion mission passed its critical design review Feb. 6. That allows NEO Surveyor to move into the next phases of assembly and testing. Part of the spacecraft, called the instrument enclosure, is undergoing environmental testing at the Johnson Space Center. Later this spring, that and other sections of the spacecraft will go to the Space Dynamics Lab in Utah to integrate other components and perform more testing.
The importance of searching for NEOs was highlighted by recent attention surrounding one such asteroid, 2024 YR4. The asteroid, discovered in December, is estimated to be between 40 and 90 meters across, and initial calculations of its orbit showed it had a small but non-zero chance of hitting the Earth in December 2032.
Additional observations resulted in the chance of an impact growing to 3.1% by Feb. 18. Subsequent observations, though, have further refined its orbit and caused the risk of an impact to fall dramatically. As of Feb. 21, the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory calculated only a 0.36% chance of an impact in December 2032.
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