NASA’s new spacecraft, the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout), is one of several payloads of the Artemis I project, which is expected to launch in November 2021.
*The spacecraft has completed all tests and is safely housed inside the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
About NEA Scout:
*It is a miniaturized spacecraft (about the size of a large shoebox) called the CubeSat, which was developed under NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems program.
*The CubeSat system was designed and developed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
*It is powered by a 925-square-foot solar system. It is the first space mission in the United States to use special solar sail propulsion for small, light spacecraft.
*The main purpose of this spacecraft is to fly through an asteroid close to the Earth and collect data.
*Its mission will take about two years, at a distance of about 93 million miles from Earth.
*It is also equipped with high-quality science fiction cameras that can take pictures from 10 cm/pixels to 50 cm/pixels.
what is Artemis I?
The Artemis I (formerly the Exploration Mission-1) is said to be an unopened test flight of NASA’s deep space exploration systems.
Under the Artemis program, NASA aims to land the first woman on the moon in 2024 and establish sustainable lunar exploration programs by 2030.