NASA Abruptly Delays a Critical Planetary Defense Mission

NASA management must approve the movement from one phase to another. These are known as Key Decision Points (KDPs) and require the team to argue their case to NASA and to an independent review board to demonstrate their readiness to proceed with a successful mission. Normally, the movement from Phase A to Phase B isn’t a major issue, as the project still remains in formulation without a formal cost estimate or commitment to building the spacecraft.

As recently as a week prior to NEO Surveyor mission’s KDP-B, representatives from NASA had publicly stated their intent to continue moving the project forward. It is unclear what happened in the interim to trigger the sudden delay.

A statement from a NASA spokesperson avoided providing details, “The decision to delay the start of the next phase of this important mission is based on factors external to the NEO Surveyor project team. Specifically, NASA needs more time to assess COVID-19 impacts to the overall Planetary Science Division budget and assess appropriate life cycle costs for this mission to support decisions at KDP-B, as NEO Surveyor formulation activities continue.â€

The NEO Surveyor mission has now been in Phase A for over 5 years. Few—if any—missions have remained in this early formulation purgatory for so long, unable to move forward with making important contracts for key materials and hardware, and unable to develop a detailed cost and schedule plan.

There is no longer any debate about the importance of the NEO Surveyor mission. In 2019, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report calling for a space-based infrared telescope to find NEOs—exactly what the NEO Surveyor mission is. NASA’s own Inspector General concluded that the agency had “consistently underfunded†its NEO observations program, and that, at current projections, there isn’t enough funding to launch the NEO Surveyor mission until as late as 2030.

Congress has been clear in its support, with a number of pieces of legislation in the Senate calling for a launch of the mission by 2025. The House of Representatives has also included supportive language in its NASA legislation, including directing at least $40 million for the project in 2021.

And, if nothing else, the U.S. public considers planetary defense missions like NEO Surveyor to be one of the highest-priority activities of the space agency.

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