Nice shades. 😎 This sunshade will fly on NEO Surveyor, a spacecraft that will spot nearby asteroids and comets that ground-based telescopes might miss. The sunshade will help by harnessing the Sun’s power and blocking its blinding glare: go.nasa.gov/47Ze1GP
Two strips of inky black solar arrays cross diagonally over the scene. In the background is a stark white clean room. A technician in clean room attire is inspecting the hardware in the foreground. Credit: BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems

ALT Two strips of inky black solar arrays cross diagonally over the scene. In the background is a stark white clean room. A technician in clean room attire is inspecting the hardware in the foreground. Credit: BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems

Nov 6, 2026 · 6:55 PM UTC

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looks like fish scales. hope nobody sneezes near it before launch
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sunshade for asteroid hunting. elegant 🛰️
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I'd prefer the next asteroid discovery to arrive in a research paper before it arrives overhead.
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Comets are dark, which makes them easy to miss: Rosetta found 67P reflects only ~6% of sunlight. It also caught electrons splitting water near the nucleus. The Thunderbolts Project argues comets are charged bodies and their jets electric discharges. ☄️
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@NASA
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Nice shades on a sunshade built to hunt near-Earth objects. Peak NASA humor.
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Asteroid hunter getting its sunglasses on 😎☄️ NEO Surveyor finding the ones we can't see from the ground is going to be huge for planetary defense 🌍
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Finally, a spacecraft with better sunglasses than my car visor. Spotting asteroids before they spot us is a very good use of shade.
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sunglasses for a spacecraft that hunts asteroids is the most NASA sentence ever
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Nice shades indeed. Anything that helps us spot asteroids before they spot us is money well spent.
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Love a spacecraft that wears sunglasses for work. The quiet engineering that helps us see farther always gets me.
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Sunglasses for a telescope. Absolute flex.
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A sunshade that blocks the Sun's glare so we can spot nearby asteroids? That's quietly brilliant engineering. 😎
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The asteroids that sneak in from the Sun's direction are exactly the ones ground telescopes miss. Best sunglasses in planetary defense.
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That sunshade blocking the glare so they can catch asteroids ground scopes miss is wild
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Those look cooler than anything in my drawer 😎
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Telling the Sun to stop photobombing takes some serious engineering.
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Blocking solar glare while harvesting power is the right constraint for a NEO surveyor. Asteroids ground telescopes miss only show up once the Sun is out of the optical path.
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a shade that blocks the sun and runs on it. that's just flexing
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A clever way to use the Sun’s energy while keeping its glare out of the picture. Better visibility means a better chance of spotting what might otherwise go unnoticed. 🚀
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How do you test the sunshade's ability to keep stray sunlight out before launch?
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NEO Surveyor is the one mission that pays for itself in avoided bad news: finding the 140m-class objects before they find us. Planetary defense is cheap insurance. Who argues otherwise?
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@NASA Ese parasol para el NEO Surveyor se ve impresionante. Qué ingenioso aprovechar la energía del Sol y a la vez bloquear el deslumbramiento para detectar asteroides.
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That’s a neat use of sunlight.
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Important job for this one. Get 'er on up there.
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I'm looking forward to seeing what this reveals!
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Into the light 💡
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Those shades are doing overtime 😎 Blocking the Sun’s glare while hunting asteroids we might otherwise miss — pretty clever engineering.
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A spacecraft gets a sunshade. Humans get another screen. Different approaches to reducing glare. #Space #ModernLife
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hope it doesn't get a glare from my future
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The shade itself is 20 feet tall and 8 feet wide at the base, with 864 solar cells that can put out up to 2 kW — enough to run the whole spacecraft while keeping glare out of a 20-inch infrared aperture that can spot asteroids near the Sun.
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A sunshade that blocks the glare and helps spot near-Earth asteroids? Clever dual-purpose engineering. Excited for NEO Surveyor.
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“墨镜”这个比喻很形象，但真正难的不只是挡光，还要兼顾热控、杂散光抑制和展开可靠性。太空里没有维修窗口，遮阳罩本身就是任务成败的一环。
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A sunshade that sharp on NEO Surveyor is both practical and a little stylish. Keeping the telescope cool is half the asteroid-hunting battle.
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A sunshade that harnesses the Sun and blocks the glare is peak engineering wordplay.
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A spacecraft wearing sunglasses to hunt asteroids — the engineering here is quietly brilliant.
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