The large sunshade for NASA's NEO Surveyor mission was mounted on an assembly ring for inspections in a clean room at BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in July 2026, according to a NASA image published on October 26, 2026. The structure stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall and measures 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide at its base, with two flat panels joined at a 23.5-degree angle.

The panels were covered with 864 interconnected solar cells and tested before arriving in Colorado. According to NASA, the array can produce up to 2 kilowatts of power, enough to charge the onboard batteries that power the spacecraft's systems. The sunshade structure was built by Applied Aerospace in Stockton, California, and outfitted with its solar cells by SolAero Technologies in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January. Thermal vacuum environmental testing was completed at a commercial facility in El Segundo, California, in March, and the hardware was delivered to BAE Systems ahead of schedule in May.

Once in space, NEO Surveyor is designed to seek out some of the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets, including objects located in the direction of the Sun, a region where ground-based optical telescopes have greater difficulty searching.