Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission 

NEO Surveillance Mission (NEOSM) consists of a single scientific instrument: a 50 cm diameter telescope operating at two heat-sensing infrared wavelengths that are capable of detecting even the dark asteroids that are hardest to find. 

After launch, NEOSM will carry out a four-year baseline survey to find 2/3 of the near-Earth objects larger than 140 m (large enough to cause major regional damage in the event of an Earth impact).  By using two heat-sensitive infrared imaging channels, NEOSM can also make accurate measurements of NEO sizes and can gain valuable information about their composition, shapes, rotational states, and orbits. 

NEOSM employs an innovative observation strategy to independently discover new asteroids and comets and determine their orbits with enough accuracy to allow them to be found again.  In four years of survey operation, NEOSM is designed to make significant progress toward meeting the U.S. Congress's mandate to NASA to find 90% of all NEOs larger than 140 m in diameter. 

Like NASA's WISE mission (which was delivered on cost and on schedule according to the March 2011 GAO report), NEOSM will be built and tested by competitively-selected industrial contractors in order to ensure the lowest cost and highest value to taxpayers.  Led by the Principal Investigator, a small team at JPL will provide overall project systems engineering and will manage the contracts for the spacecraft bus, payload, and science data processing.  The PI is supported by the science team. Science leadership is integrally involved at every stage of NEOSM's development, from requirements definition, design, fabrication, and testing to launch, in-orbit checkout, flight operations, and data analysis, ensuring that the instrument is optimized to meet the mission's scientific objectives.