NASA is building a telescope whose whole job is to find the asteroids nobody has spotted yet, especially the dark ones and the ones coming at us out of the Sun's glare. Overnight our time, the agency said the biggest piece of it, a six-metre sunshade that doubles as the solar panel, has finished its testing and is ready to go on.
Liora Hale · Tuesday 27 October 2026
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Sources
- Sunshade for NASA’s NEO Surveyor Mission Ready for Its Day in Sun
- NEO Surveyor mission page
- NASA’s Next-Gen Near-Earth Asteroid Space Telescope Takes Shape
- The Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission (Mainzer et al.)
- NASA Awards Planetary Defense Space Telescope Launch Services Contract
- NASA’s NEO Surveyor Successfully Passes Key Milestone
- NASA’s NEO Surveyor Successfully Completes Critical Design Review
- Major Component of NASA’s NEO Surveyor Begins Test for Deep Space
- Key Hardware for NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting NEO Surveyor Comes Home
- NEO Surveyor Multimedia
- Near-Earth Object Observations Program
- NASA Mission Concludes After Years of Successful Asteroid Detections (NEOWISE)
- NASA’s NEOWISE Spacecraft Re-Enters Atmosphere
- Remembering the Chelyabinsk Impact 10 Years Ago, and Looking to the Future
- Dark Skies Bring New Observations of Asteroid 2024 YR4, Lower Impact Probability
- New NASA Asteroid Observations Eliminate Chance of 2032 Lunar Impact
- NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid’s Motion in Space
- Braking news! Time for ESA’s Hera asteroid mission to go slow
- ESA’s Hera targets early arrival at Didymos asteroids
- Planetary Defenders (NASA+ Original Documentary)
- Deep Space Network
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