WASHINGTON – NASA has awarded SpaceX a contract to launch the Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission (NEO Surveyor), with the goal of putting an asteroid-detecting planetary defense system in space.
NEO Surveyor will launch no earlier than September 2027 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center, according to NASA’s blog.
The agency says that this telescope is nearly 20 inches in diameter and will be capable of detecting more asteroids than its predecessor, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which launched in December 2009 and ended its mission in July 2024.
NEO Surveyor’s job will last it a baseline five years as it scans the universe to find at least two-thirds of remaining unknown near-Earth objects larger than 460 feet, which NASA states are the kind of asteroids large enough to cause major regional damage if they hit the planet.
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The firm fixed price launch service task order is being awarded under the indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity NASA Launch Services II contract, the blog states, adding the total cost to NASA for the launch service is around $100 million.
Learn more about the contract from NASA’s blog and visit its NEO Surveyor page for more about the mission.