Aye, someone can certainly do science with the data, but the fact that its looking for neo asteroids and not being used to study specific things limits what can be learned.
Started streaming Aug 19, 2024Watch as NASA’s next planetary-protection mission comes together at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor is an infrared space telescope being built to help advance NASA’s planetary defense efforts — the first space telescope specifically designed to hunt asteroids and comets that may be potential hazards to Earth.You are viewing activities in the High Bay 1 clean room at JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Over the coming weeks, the large panels, cabling, and other components for NEO Surveyor’s instrument enclosure will take shape. In the center of the clean room is a platform, called the Medium Articulating Assembly Dolly (MAAD), which is designed to support the instrument enclosure, where components will be assembled and mounted. The enclosure is a key part of the spacecraft, housing NEO Surveyor’s powerful telescope and infrared instrumentation. When completed and tested, the enclosure will be mounted to the back of the spacecraft’s large sunshield and avionics for the mission, scheduled to launch no earlier than September 2027. The telescope, which is being built in another clean room at JPL, has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters) — larger than NASA’s previous asteroid-hunting space telescope, NEOWISE — and it will collect infrared light from some of the most difficult-to-find near-Earth objects in the solar system. Additional construction and testing will take place at JPL and partner institutions across the United States.
The mirrors for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope are being installed and aligned, and work on other spacecraft components is accelerating.NASA’s new asteroid-hunting spacecraft is taking shape at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Called NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor), this cutting-edge infrared space telescope will seek out the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to our planet. In fact, it is the agency’s first space telescope designed specifically for planetary defense.Targeting launch in late 2027, the spacecraft will travel a million miles to a region of gravitational stability — called the L1 Lagrange point — between Earth and the Sun. From there, its large sunshade will block the glare and heat of sunlight, allowing the mission to discover and track near-Earth objects as they approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, which is difficult for other observatories to do. The space telescope also may reveal asteroids called Earth Trojans, which lead and trail our planet’s orbit and are difficult to see from the ground or from Earth orbit.NEO Surveyor relies on cutting-edge detectors that observe two bands of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. Near-Earth objects, no matter how dark, glow brightly in infrared as the Sun heats them. Because of this, the telescope will be able to find dark asteroids and comets, which don’t reflect much visible light. It also will measure those objects, a challenging task for visible-light telescopes that have a hard time distinguishing between small, highly reflective objects and large, dark ones.“NEO Surveyor is optimized to help us to do one specific thing: enable humanity to find the most hazardous asteroids and comets far enough in advance so we can do something about them,” said Amy Mainzer, survey director for NEO Surveyor and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We aim to build a spacecraft that can find, track, and characterize the objects with the greatest chance of hitting Earth. In the process, we will learn a lot about their origins and evolution.”Coming Into FocusThe spacecraft’s only instrument is its telescope. About the size of a washer-and-dryer set, the telescope’s blocky aluminum body, called the optical bench, was built in a JPL clean room. Known as a three-mirror anastigmat telescope, it will rely on curved mirrors to focus light onto its infrared detectors in such a way that minimizes optical aberrations.“We have been carefully managing the fabrication of the spacecraft’s telescope mirrors, all of which were received in the JPL clean room by July,” said Brian Monacelli, principal optical engineer at JPL. “Its mirrors were shaped and polished from solid aluminum using a diamond-turning machine. Each exceeds the mission’s performance requirements.”Monacelli inspected the mirror surfaces for debris and damage, then JPL’s team of optomechanical technicians and engineers attached the mirrors to the telescope’s optical bench in August. Next, they will measure the telescope’s performance and align its mirrors.Complementing the mirror assembly are the telescope’s mercury-cadmium-telluride detectors, which are similar to the detectors used by NASA’s recently retired NEOWISE (short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission. An advantage of these detectors is that they don’t necessarily require cryogenic coolers or cryogens to lower their operational temperatures in order to detect infrared wavelengths. Cryocoolers and cryogens can limit the lifespan of a spacecraft. NEO Surveyor will instead keep its cool by using its large sunshade to block sunlight from heating the telescope and by occupying an orbit beyond that of the Moon, minimizing heating from Earth.The telescope will eventually be installed inside the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure, which is being assembled in JPL’s historic High Bay 1 clean room where NASA missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and Perseverance were constructed. Fabricated from dark composite material that allows heat to escape, the enclosure will help keep the telescope cool and prevent its own heat from obscuring observations.Once it is completed in coming weeks, the enclosure will be tested to make sure it can withstand the rigors of space exploration. Then it will be mounted on the back of the sunshade and atop the electronic systems that will power and control the spacecraft.“The entire team has been working hard for a long time to get to this point, and we are excited to see the hardware coming together with contributions from our institutional and industrial collaborators from across the country,” said Tom Hoffman, NEO Surveyor’s project manager at JPL. “From the panels and cables for the instrument enclosure to the detectors and mirrors for the telescope — as well as components to build the spacecraft — hardware is being fabricated, delivered, and assembled to build this incredible observatory.”
China is going to do a deflection mission:https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1832693599646961938
Quote from: Blackstar on 09/08/2024 04:09 pmChina is going to do a deflection mission:https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1832693599646961938Awesome. Now more people will be paying attention to planetary defense. Yay earth!
Quote from: deadman1204 on 09/09/2024 02:33 pmQuote from: Blackstar on 09/08/2024 04:09 pmChina is going to do a deflection mission:https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1832693599646961938Awesome. Now more people will be paying attention to planetary defense. Yay earth!We don't need deflection missions, we need survey missions. You can't deflect what you never see.
Quote from: Blackstar on 09/09/2024 11:40 pmQuote from: deadman1204 on 09/09/2024 02:33 pmQuote from: Blackstar on 09/08/2024 04:09 pmChina is going to do a deflection mission:https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1832693599646961938Awesome. Now more people will be paying attention to planetary defense. Yay earth!We don't need deflection missions, we need survey missions. You can't deflect what you never see.True. I suspect the mission is more about demonstrating military space capabilities (tracking, guidance, ect) than it is about honest planetary protection. It does feel kinda cold war space demonstrationish
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.
On Feb. 6, NASA’s NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor) passed its critical design review, or CDR, at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the project is managed. Capping three days of presentations, a NASA Standing Review Board determined that the mission meets all technical performance measures and requirements. The project will now move forward to the next phases of construction and testing.After being built at JPL, the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure moved to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for tests that replicate the environmental conditions of launch and space. It will soon return to NASA JPL, where work will continue.Meanwhile, the mission’s telescope, which is part of a large blocky aluminum structure called an Optical Telescope Assembly, is undergoing final testing at NASA JPL. This spring, both the telescope and instrument enclosure will ship to mission contractor Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, where the rest of the subsystems will be integrated and tested.
[...] we need more survey telescopes searching for asteroids for lots of reasons. For instance, what if it is the United States that detects a dangerous asteroid, but China does not accept the data? Having multiple survey telescopes operated by different countries provides political and technical redundancy.
The instrument enclosure of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor is prepared for critical environmental tests inside the historic Chamber A at the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in December 2024. Wrapped in silver thermal blanketing, the 12-foot-long (3.7-meter-long) angular structure was subjected to the frigid, airless conditions that the spacecraft will experience when in deep space. The cavernous thermal-vacuum test facility is famous for testing the Apollo spacecraft that traveled to the Moon in the 1960s and ’70s.The instrument enclosure is designed to protect the spacecraft’s infrared telescope while also removing heat from it during operations. After environmental testing was completed, the enclosure returned to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for further work, after which it will ship to the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, and be joined to the telescope. Both the instrument enclosure and telescope were assembled at JPL.
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.[...]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.
Teams are prepping the NEO Surveyor instrument enclosure to leave JPL as it heads to its next phase of testing and assembly in Utah.
NEO Surveyor is getting ready for a roadtrip!Cruising toward its late-2027 launch, the asteroid hunter's next stop is the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, where its instrument enclosure (seen being lifted here) will be joined with the telescope.
In 2009 and again in 2019 I worked on studies looking at the detection of NEOs. Although Congress mandated that NASA detect a certain percentage of NEOs 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020, neither successive administrations or Congress provided the money to achieve that goal. https://www.leonarddavid.com/detection-to-deflection-evaluating-nasas-planetary-defense-strategy/
