NASA's NEO Surveyor in Deep Space (Artist's Concept)

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) in deep space. After launch, 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 black-paneled angular structure in the belly of the spacecraft is the instrument enclosure that is being built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The spacecraft's only instrument, its infrared telescope, will be installed inside the enclosure. 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. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26388

Date

2024-08-28

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

illustration (NASA artwork)

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