What gets funded gets built. The Planetary Society has supported the project for the past few years and it has made it to the development stage with an eye for a launch.
The purpose of the satellite is to survey for objects near the Earth. Because of their location in the solar system, asteroids and other small bodies that are potentially on an eventual collision course with Earth can't be seen by most survey missions.
Their signals are usually just background noise against the Sun's signal. The ability to detect individual asteroid heat signatures will allow it to isolated potentially dangerous asteroids. NASA has been interested in the mission since it was first proposed in 2005.
NASA has budgetary difficulties, and that's no different for the NEO Surveyor. Project scientists and engineers were forced to move on to other projects after the agency canceled the budget for the next two years. The bill for the project ballooned to over a billion dollars due to the increased inflation in the economy.
The Planetary Society expects Congress to support the project despite the price hike because of the thousands of people who wrote their local representatives. The CHIPS and Science act passed by Congress earlier this year forces NASA to not cut programs funding if there are cost overruns on other programs.
After securing funding, the mission will move on to building and testing flight hardware. All of the hardware should be ready for final assembly at the end of this phase. There is still a long way to go before the project is ready to collect data on our planetary neighborhood. The project appears to be on track to deliver some helpful data points.
The Tuscon amateur astronomy association has a channel.
You can learn more.
There is a planetary society.
NASA has approved a space telescope that will be used to look for dangerous asteroids.
Astronomers have found tens of thousands of asteroids so far.
There are three new potentially hazardous asteroids discovered.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
