The large sunshade of NASA's NEO Surveyor space telescope has completed a round of inspections in a clean room at BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado. The structure, photographed mounted on an assembly ring in July 2026, stands 20 feet (6 metres) tall and measures 8 feet (2.4 metres) wide at its base.

NEO Surveyor is NASA's mission dedicated to detecting and characterising near-Earth objects, asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to the planet. The sunshade plays an essential role in the observatory's design: it keeps the instruments in shadow and at low temperature, so the telescope can register the faint infrared heat emitted by these bodies without sunlight and heat from the Sun, or the satellite's own warmth, saturating the detectors.

Ground inspection is part of the integration and testing phase prior to launch. The structure is examined while mounted on the assembly ring to verify its geometry and condition before moving on to the next stages of observatory assembly. The image shows two flat surfaces that make up the thermal shield.

The project is advancing at the Boulder industrial facilities as NASA prepares the observatory for its planetary surveillance mission.