March 27, 2025
NEO Surveyor Instrument Enclosure Tested Inside Historic Chamber for Apollo Spacecraft Testing
by Monika Luabeya, NASA
The instrument enclosure of NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor was prepared for critical environmental tests inside the historic Chamber A at the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in December 2024.
Wrapped in silver thermal blanketing, the 12-foot-long (3.7-meter-long) angular structure was subjected to the frigid, airless conditions that the spacecraft will experience when in deep space. The cavernous thermal-vacuum test facility is famous for testing the Apollo spacecraft that traveled to the moon in the 1960s and '70s.
The instrument enclosure is designed to protect the spacecraft's infrared telescope while also removing heat from it during operations. After environmental testing was completed, the enclosure returned to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for further work, after which it will ship to the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, and be joined to the telescope. Both the instrument enclosure and telescope were assembled at JPL.
As NASA's first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor will seek out, measure, and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth. While many near-Earth objects don't reflect much visible light, they glow brightly in infrared light due to heating by the sun. The spacecraft's telescope, which has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters), features detectors sensitive to two infrared wavelengths in which near-Earth objects re-radiate solar heat.
Provided by NASA
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Get Instant Summarized Text (Gist)
NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor's instrument enclosure underwent environmental testing in Chamber A at the Johnson Space Center, simulating deep space conditions. The enclosure, designed to protect and cool the spacecraft's infrared telescope, will be integrated with the telescope at the Space Dynamics Laboratory. NEO Surveyor aims to detect and characterize asteroids and comets that pose potential threats to Earth by observing their infrared emissions.
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