Technicians at BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado, inspected the large sunshade for NASA’s NEO Surveyor mission in late July. The structure is a key component of the spacecraft designed to detect asteroids and comets that are difficult to observe from Earth, particularly those located near the Sun.
The sunshade structure was manufactured by Applied Aerospace in Stockton, California. In January, SolAero Technologies in Albuquerque, New Mexico, installed the solar cells onto the assembly. Following this, the hardware underwent environmental testing at a commercial thermal vacuum facility in El Segundo, California, during March.
The completed sunshade and solar array were delivered to BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in May. This delivery occurred ahead of the original project schedule. Once operational in space, the NEO Surveyor mission will focus on identifying objects that ground-based optical telescopes often struggle to track.
