[3] The NEO Surveyor spacecraft will survey from the Sun–Earth L1 (inner) Lagrange point, allowing it to see objects inside Earth's orbit, and its mid-infrared detectors sensitive to thermal emission will detect asteroids independently of their reflected sunlight.

[1][7] In 2019, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office decided to fund this mission outside NASA's science budget due to its national security implications.

[2] In 2005, the U.S. Congress mandated NASA to achieve by the year 2020 specific levels of search completeness for discovering, cataloging, and characterizing dangerous asteroids larger than 140 m (460 ft) (Act of 2005, H.R.

[14] NASA did not prioritize this unfunded mandate, and directed the NEOCam project to compete against science missions for general funds unrelated to planetary defense and disaster mitigation planning.

[16][17] The mission concept nonetheless received technology development funding in 2010 to design and test new infrared detectors optimized for asteroid and comet detection and sizing.

[1] The near-miss of asteroid 2019 OK, which slipped past extant detection methods in July 2019, has been suggested to have helped prompt this decision.

[1][27] Its field of view and its sensitivity will be wide and deep enough to allow the mission to discover about 200,000 to 300,000 of new NEOs with sizes as small as 10 m (33 ft) in diameter.

NC2 is optimized to maximize sensitivity to typical NEO thermal emission at 200-300 K.[2] Its field of view is 11.56 square degrees.

[35] For good infrared performance without the use of cryogenic fluid refrigeration,[36] the detector will be passively cooled to 30 K (−243.2 °C; −405.7 °F) using techniques proven by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

NEO Surveyor will also be able to conduct targeted follow-up (TFO) to obtain more information for an object of special interest.

[2] It is planned that moving object tracklets are delivered to the Minor Planet Center 2 to 3 times a day, on average 72 hours after their discovery.