NEOCam: The Near-Earth Object Camera

Details NEOCam: The Near-Earth Object Camera NEOCam: The Near-Earth Object Camera

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.4509m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #45.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.568

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) is a space-based mid- infrared (IR) observing system, operating at the Earth-Sun L1 point.
NEOCam's primary science goals are:
- To assess the hazard to Earth from Near-Earth Objects (NEOs)
- To study the origin and ultimate fate of our Solar System's asteroids
NEOCam consists of a 50 cm telescope passively cooled to 30 K; it is equipped with a single mid-IR bandpass operating from 6 - 10 um. NEOCam will detect 78% of potentially hazardous NEOs >140; m diameter within 5 years. If the mission continues for an additional 5 years, NEOCam will meet NASA's goal of discovering 90% of potentially hazardous objects larger than 140 m in diameter. NEOCam's observation strategy allows it to discover the orbits of new NEOs independently and provide robust diameter measurements for all detections. NEOCam will discover and measure diameters for 100x more NEOs than are currently known today. NEOCam will place the first constraints on the population of asteroids with orbits that are totally interior to the Earth's orbit (IEOs). NEOCam is sensitive to a wide range of albedos and can scan areas of the sky that are difficult to access with ground-based surveys. NEOCam is fundamentally different from visible surveys, since its mid-IR bandpass allows more direct physical characterization of asteroids.

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