The Heart of NEO Surveyor: Its Infrared Detectors

Four mid-wavelength infrared science detectors for NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission are shown here on a clean room bench at the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah. Mounted to a sensor chip assembly, the four blue-green-colored detectors are made with mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe), a versatile semiconducting alloy that is sensitive to infrared wavelengths. There are two such assemblies that form the heart of NEO Surveyor’s two science cameras. These state-of-the-art cameras sense solar heat re-radiated by near-Earth objects. The mission’s cameras and telescope, which has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters), will be housed inside the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure, a structure that is designed to ensure heat produced by the spacecraft and instrument during operations doesn’t interfere with its infrared observations. Targeting launch in late 2027, the NEO Surveyor mission is led by Professor Amy Mainzer at the University of California, Los Angeles for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and is being managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems and the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and Teledyne are among the companies that were contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder will support operations, and IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for producing some of the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information about NEO Surveyor is available at: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/