NASA’s DART mission was a success, and now, the agency’s NEO Surveyor infrared space telescope has just passed Key Decision Point C (KDP-C). This means that it’s confirmed to be on the next flight mission out of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) and will hunt for killer asteroids near Earth.
The infrared space telescope has the ability to discover and characterize at least 90% of the potentially hazardous asteroids as well as comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit. These are also called near-earth objects, or NEOs, and passing the KDP-C furthers NASA’s commitment to planetary defense and the search for NEOs that could one day pose a serious threat to Earth.
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The flight mission, which falls under the agency’s Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission directorate, is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the survey investigation is led by the University of Arizona,” said the agency.
