Context: Recently, NASA announced that its new spacecraft, named NEA Scout, has completed all required tests and has been safely tucked inside the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
About Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout

• It is a small spacecraft, about the size of a big shoebox.
• Its main mission is to fly by and collect data from a near-Earth asteroid.
• It will also be America’s first interplanetary mission using a special solar sail propulsion.
• It will use stainless steel alloy booms and deploy an aluminum-coated sail measuring 925 square feet.
• The spacecraft will take about two years to cruise to the asteroid and will be about 93 million miles away from Earth during the asteroid encounter.

Working of Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout

• It is equipped with special cameras and can take pictures ranging from 50 cm/pixels to 10 cm/pixels.
• It can also process the image and reduce the file sizes before sending them to the earth-based Deep Space Network via its medium-gain antenna.
• The images gathered by NEA Scout will provide critical information on the asteroid’s physical properties such as orbit, shape, volume, rotation, and dust & debris field surrounding it.

Reasons for studying Near-Earth Asteroid

• It could help us develop strategies for reducing the potential damage caused in the event of an impact.
• The scientists will use this data to determine what is required to reduce risk, increase effectiveness, and improve the design and operations of robotic and human space exploration.

Additional Information

Note: Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, much smaller than planets. They are also called minor planets. They move mostly between the orbits of the fourth planet Mars and fifth planet Jupiter.

• The asteroid belt lies between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from our sun. One AU is the distance between the Earth and sun. So the width of the asteroid belt is roughly 1 AU, or 92 million miles (150 million km).