NASA has officially chosen SpaceX, located in Starbase, Texas, to provide launch services for its Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission. The mission aims to detect and observe asteroids and comets that could potentially pose an impact threat to Earth.
The firm fixed price launch service task order has been awarded under NASA's indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity Launch Services II contract. The total cost to NASA for the launch service is approximately $100 million, which includes the launch service and other mission-related expenses. The NEO Surveyor mission is slated to launch no earlier than September 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida.
The core of the NEO Surveyor mission is a single scientific instrument: an almost 20-inch (50-centimeter) diameter telescope. This telescope will operate at two heat-sensing infrared wavelengths and is capable of detecting both bright and dark asteroids—the latter being particularly challenging to find with current technology. The space telescope is designed to enhance NASA’s planetary defense efforts by discovering and characterizing most potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that approach within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. These celestial bodies are collectively called near-Earth objects, or NEOs.
The mission aims to conduct a five-year baseline survey to identify at least two-thirds of the unknown NEOs larger than 140 meters (460 feet), which are capable of causing significant regional damage in the event of an Earth impact. Utilizing two heat-sensitive infrared imaging channels, the telescope can also make more precise measurements of the sizes of NEOs and gather data on their composition, shapes, rotational states, and orbits.
The mission is overseen by NASA’s Planetary Science Division within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Program oversight is provided by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, established in 2016 to manage ongoing planetary defense efforts. NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, provides program management for the NEO Surveyor. The project is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Multiple aerospace and engineering companies are contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation, including BAE Systems SMS (Space & Mission Systems), Space Dynamics Laboratory, and Teledyne. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will support operations, while the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, is tasked with processing survey data and producing the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Mission team leadership includes the University of California, Los Angeles. NASA’s Launch Services Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for managing the launch service.
For more information about the NEO Surveyor mission, visit: NASA's NEO Surveyor Mission Page
Contact Information: Tiernan Doyle / Joshua Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-358-1100
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov
