Image of the proposed Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) mission (IMAGE)
Caption
This is an image of the proposed Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) mission, which is designed to find, track and characterize Earth-approaching asteroids and comets. Using a thermal infrared camera, the mission would measure the heat signatures of NEOs regardless of whether they are light or dark colored. The telescope's housing is painted black to efficiently radiate its own heat into space, and its sun shield allows it to observe close to the Sun where NEOs in the most Earth-like orbits spend much of their time. In the background is a set of images of main belt asteroids collected by the prototype mission NEOWISE; the asteroids appear as red dots against the background stars and galaxies.
Credit
NASA
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