The Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission

December 2023 • 2023PSJ.....4..224M

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

Abstract • 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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• PDF https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ad0468/pdf
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2310.12918
• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.3847%2FPSJ%2Fad0468