NASA’s Next Asteroid-Hunting Telescope Will Launch Later and Cost More Than Expected

NASA’s plan for an upcoming infrared asteroid-hunting telescope, known as Near Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, has formally modified. NEO Surveyor’s anticipated price ticket has doubled from an estimated excessive of $600 million to a whopping $1.2 billion, whereas the launch has additionally been pushed from 2026 to June 2028.

The deliberate NEO Surveyor mission has passed a NASA technical review, however with some necessary, if not uncomfortable, changes. The telescope is a part of NASA’s initiative to establish and catalog near-Earth objects—a key part of its general planetary protection technique.

It all started with a congressional directive cast 17 years in the past. The 2005 George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act established a survey program with the specific objective for NASA to catalog 90% of near-Earth objects bigger than 328 ft (100 meters) in diameter and to evaluate their dangers to our planet. Congress wished this accomplished by 2020, which clearly hasn’t occurred. According to NASA program scientist Kelly Fast, as reported in Space Policy Online, it is going to now, sadly, take one other three a long time for NASA to succeed in the objective requested by Congress.

NEO Surveyor is supposed to interchange the NEOWISE space telescope mission, which has been looking for asteroids and comets since its launch in 2009. NASA not too long ago granted the NEOWISE mission a two-year extension, taking the venture to 2023. NEO Surveyor’s rescheduled launch to 2028 solely extends an already gigantic delay between the 2 missions, which might negatively influence NASA’s near-Earth object analysis.

NASA’s curiosity in near-Earth objects is part of a twofold strategy to planetary protection, which incorporates the detection of asteroids and comets in addition to the mitigation of these objects, during which NEO Surveyor and NEOWISE are supposed to assist with the previous. Active mitigation of near-Earth objects is one other story, with the latest DART mission serving as the primary check of a planetary protection technique; earlier this 12 months, the DART spacecraft slammed right into a innocent asteoroid, barely altering its orbital trajectory, in what was a really promising check. For future DART-like methods to work, nevertheless, we’ll want to search out harmful asteroids earlier than they develop into an issue, making the delay with NEO Surveyor all of the extra unsavory.

More on this story: Why DART Is the Most Important Mission Ever Launched to Space

The advantage of NEO Surveyor shall be its vantage level from area, which provides scientists an elevated discipline of view over ground-based detection. This bigger window will seemingly assist to speed up NASA’s present 30-12 months detection timeline to fulfill Congress’ 2005 objective.

NASA’s DART mission helped to illustrate the significance of near-Earth object detection. While a delayed timeline will damage NASA’s efforts to review and catalog these comets and asteroids—and any threats they pose to Earth and spaceflight—the elevated price ticket may very well be a sign that our authorities is taking these potential threats critically.

More: This High-Tech Cube Will Visit the Asteroid Smashed by NASA’s DART Spacecraft