NEOMIR: project statut of ESA’s space-based infrared mission for NEO detection and early warning

To warn about potential asteroid or comet impacts, we must first observe and discover these objects through dedicated NEO surveys. Most current and planned surveys are ground-based and use visible light, but they face limitations like weather dependency, limited sky visibility, difficulty detecting at low galactic latitudes, and inability to determine physical properties directly. A space-based mission at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1) using thermal infrared could address these issues by scanning areas of the sky inaccessible from the ground and providing early warnings of imminent impacts.

To fill the abovementioned gap, ESA is studying an NEO Mission in the Infra-Red, called NEOMIR hereafter. NEOMIR aims to detect objects of at least 35 m in diameter (i.e., similar to the Tunguska event) from within Earth's orbit with enough lead time for mitigation. It does this by pointing at relatively low solar elongation, i.e., in directions angularly close to the Sun at all Ecliptic latitudes, shortening exposure times, and increasing revisit cadence to avoid missing faster NEOs. The infrared data will help determine initial orbits and sizes.

We will present the mission and spacecraft design, the status of the project, as well as initial results on expected detection capabilities. We will focus on the NEOMIR ability to detect possible Earth impactors and todetermine their orbits and impact locations. We will also analyse what would have been the NEOMIR contributions in real-case scenarios such as the Chelyabinsk impactor and 2024 YR4.