NASA Advances Space Exploration: NEO Surveyor, Space Weather Next, and SPHEREx Missions Forge Ahead

NASA is advancing its space exploration and planetary defense initiatives with several key missions. SpaceX has been contracted for approximately $100 million to launch the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission, scheduled for September 2027. This mission aims to detect and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids and comets using a 50-centimeter infrared telescope. BAE Systems has been awarded $230.6 million to develop spacecraft for NOAA's Space Weather Next program, ensuring continuous space weather observations from Lagrange 1, critical for protecting Earth's infrastructure. Additionally, the SPHEREx mission, launching no earlier than February 27 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, will survey the Milky Way for water ice and other key ingredients for life, focusing on molecular clouds and utilizing absorption spectroscopy to identify frozen compounds.