NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor Space Telescope is currently under construction at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Once launched and operational, it will identify potentially dangerous asteroids and comets that come within 48 million kilometers of Earth’s orbit.
“We know from the geological record that asteroid and comet impacts do occur,” says NEO Surveyor principal investigator Amy Mainser. “To really advance what we know and discover more objects, we need to be able to detect them when they are far away from us.”
The new telescope builds on the capabilities of its predecessor, NEOWISE, along with a network of ground-based telescopes. The 50 centimeter diameter telescope operates in two heat-sensitive infrared wavelengths, identifying objects with potentially very dark surfaces from their thermal radiation. “We know that some asteroids have very dark, carbon-rich surfaces. They’re really, really dark, like printer toner,” Mainser said.
Although the risk may seem small, even relatively small objects can have devastating consequences. NASA and others have already developed ways to distort the orbits of asteroids, and NEO Surveyor forms a key part of this defense. “The more time you have, the more options you have to actually do something,” Mainzer says.