Summary
NASA has completed integrating and testing the solar arrays on the NEO Surveyor mission’s sunshade. The structure will shield the infrared telescope from sunlight while providing power for the spacecraft.
NASA says teams have completed integrating solar arrays onto the sunshade of its Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission and finished functional and performance testing of the arrays. The structure serves two roles: it blocks sunlight from the telescope and carries the spacecraft’s solar power system.
A sunshade that also generates power
The sunshade stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall and is 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide at its base. Its two flat panels meet at a 23.5-degree angle and carry 864 interconnected solar cells. NASA says the array can produce up to 2 kilowatts, providing all the electricity needed to charge the spacecraft’s onboard batteries and run its systems.
The component’s development has included environmental testing. NASA reports that testing of the sunshade and solar array was completed at a thermal-vacuum facility in March. The assembly was delivered to BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in May, ahead of schedule. Since then, teams have added coarse Sun sensors for determining the spacecraft’s orientation and temperature sensors, and completed the solar array’s functional and performance tests.
How the telescope will search for near-Earth objects
NEO Surveyor is designed to find asteroids and comets, including some that appear in the direction of the Sun—a part of the sky that is harder for ground-based optical telescopes to search. The sunshade will keep sunlight from entering the telescope’s 20-inch-wide (50-centimeter-wide) aperture, allowing it to detect infrared emissions from objects warmed by the Sun.
The telescope will use two infrared detector arrays, each producing a 16-megapixel mosaic of the sky. Imaging the same area in two infrared bands will let the science team estimate an object’s temperature and, from that, its size. Location, motion and size information can help NASA assess near-Earth objects and better understand which may be potentially hazardous.
The update marks progress on a major spacecraft component: the arrays are integrated and tested on the sunshade. The mission’s asteroid observations will come from the telescope operating in space.