Dodging dinosaurs’ fate: NASA’s $1.4 billion asteroid hunter will launch in 2027 to track city-killing space rocks

Somewhere out there, lurking in the vastness of space, a rock may be on a slow, silent path to Earth. If it’s big enough and hits just right, the aftermath could be apocalyptic — think firestorms, tsunamis and global extinction. To avoid joining the dinosaurs, we need to spot these killers before they spot us. NASA's answer? A new spacecraft under construction at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that could be our best shot at survival.

The Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor is a $1.4-billion infrared telescope built for one purpose: to hunt down asteroids and comets that could strike Earth.

So far, astronomers have cataloged about 2,500 space rocks larger than 140 meters that pass unsettlingly close to our planet. But models suggest there could be ten times more — up to 25,000 dangerous near-Earth objects still undetected, plus countless smaller ones capable of serious damage.

“We still don’t know everything that’s in our own backyard,” said Amy Mainzer, a UCLA planetary science professor leading the mission for NASA, told phys.org. “It all starts with knowing that there’s something there and having enough time to really make an informed plan.”

These asteroids are ancient rubble — leftovers from the solar system’s creation. Most failed to become planets and have been orbiting ever since.

The NEO Surveyor will help NASA meet a Congressional mandate from 2005 to identify 90% of near-Earth objects larger than 459 feet, the kind that could level a city or, as JPL project manager Tom Hoffman put it, “vaporize the L.A. basin.”

Launching from Cape Canaveral on September 13, 2027, the mission aims to find two-thirds of these city-killers in its first five years. In ten years, it hopes to have tracked 90%.

Ground telescopes have offered our best asteroid data so far, but spotting dark, tumbling rocks from Earth is like finding ink blots in the night sky. That changes with infrared: sun-warmed asteroids glow like red Christmas lights, and the NEO Surveyor is designed to detect them.

It will operate from the first Lagrange point, or L1 — a sweet spot about a million miles from Earth where gravitational forces let spacecraft hover. From there, it will trail Earth’s orbit, capturing an expansive view that ground-based telescopes can’t match.

With more images, astronomers can better predict an object’s path and assess any threat.

Unlike Hollywood portrayals, real asteroids don't slam in from deep space. They follow looping solar orbits and could come into view decades or even centuries before a potential impact.

Thanks to today’s tech, we're no longer defenseless. In 2022, NASA's DART mission proved we can alter an asteroid’s course by slamming into it. But there are subtler strategies, too — like coating a rock in reflective paint to shift its spin, or using the gravity of a nearby spacecraft to tug it off course, Mainzer said.

Either way, the key to stopping an asteroid is knowing it's coming — and that's exactly what the NEO Surveyor is built to do.