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A technician in a white clean room gown and face mask shines a flashlight to inspect the dark, patterned cells of a large spacecraft solar array inside a clean room.

PIA26715

Credits: BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems

10/26/2026

The large sunshade of NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission is inspected by a technician at BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in late July. 

Built by Applied Aerospace in Stockton, California, the sunshade structure was outfitted with its solar cells by SolAero Technologies in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January. Environmental testing of the sunshade and solar array was completed at a commercial thermal vacuum testing facility in El Segundo, California, in March and it was delivered to BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems ahead of schedule in May.

When in space, NEO Surveyor will seek out some of the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets, some of which may be located in the direction of the Sun — a region of sky where ground-based optical telescopes have a harder time searching.

More information about NEO Surveyor is available at:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/

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Source: NASA · Rafael Alanis

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Topic
Science
Country
🇺🇸 US
Publisher language
EN
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