The Planetary Science Journal (Jan 2023)

The Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission

  • A. K. Mainzer,
  • J. R. Masiero,
  • Paul A. Abell,
  • J. M. Bauer,
  • William Bottke,
  • Bonnie J. Buratti,
  • Sean J. Carey,
  • D. Cotto-Figueroa,
  • R. M. Cutri,
  • D. Dahlen,
  • Peter R. M. Eisenhardt,
  • Y. R. Fernandez,
  • Roberto Furfaro,
  • Tommy Grav,
  • T. L. Hoffman,
  • Michael S. Kelley,
  • Yoonyoung Kim,
  • J. Davy Kirkpatrick,
  • Christopher R. Lawler,
  • Eva Lilly,
  • X. Liu,
  • Federico Marocco,
  • K. A. Marsh,
  • Frank J. Masci,
  • Craig W. McMurtry,
  • Milad Pourrahmani,
  • Lennon Reinhart,
  • Michael E. Ressler,
  • Akash Satpathy,
  • C. A. Schambeau,
  • S. Sonnett,
  • Timothy B. Spahr,
  • Jason A. Surace,
  • Mar Vaquero,
  • E. L. Wright,
  • Gregory R. Zengilowski,
  • NEO Surveyor Mission Team

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ad0468
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 12
p. 224

Abstract

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The Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission is a NASA Observatory designed to discover and characterize asteroids and comets. The mission’s primary objective is to find the majority of objects large enough to cause severe regional impact damage (>140 m in effective spherical diameter) within its 5 yr baseline survey. Operating at the Sun–Earth L1 Lagrange point, the mission will survey to within 45° of the Sun in an effort to find objects in the most Earth-like orbits. The survey cadence is optimized to provide observational arcs long enough to distinguish near-Earth objects from more distant small bodies that cannot pose an impact hazard reliably. Over the course of its survey, NEO Surveyor will discover ∼200,000–300,000 new NEOs down to sizes as small as ∼10 m and thousands of comets, significantly improving our understanding of the probability of an Earth impact over the next century.

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