  We have carried out simulations to predict the performance of a new
space-based telescopic survey operating at thermal infrared wavelengths that
seeks to discover and characterize a large fraction of the potentially
hazardous near-Earth asteroid (NEA) population. Two potential architectures for
the survey were considered: one located at the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, and
one in a Venus-trailing orbit. A sample cadence was formulated and tested,
allowing for the self-follow-up necessary for objects discovered in the daytime
sky on Earth. Synthetic populations of NEAs with sizes >=140 m in effective
spherical diameter were simulated using recent determinations of their physical
and orbital properties. Estimates of the instrumental sensitivity, integration
times, and slew speeds were included for both architectures assuming the
properties of new large-format 10 um detector arrays capable of operating at
~35 K. Our simulation included the creation of a preliminary version of a
moving object processing pipeline suitable for operating on the trial cadence.
We tested this pipeline on a simulated sky populated with astrophysical sources
such as stars and galaxies extrapolated from Spitzer and WISE data, the catalog
of known minor planets (including Main Belt asteroids, comets, Jovian Trojans,
etc.), and the synthetic NEA model. Trial orbits were computed for simulated
position-time pairs extracted from the synthetic surveys to verify that the
tested cadence would result in orbits suitable for recovering objects at a
later time. Our results indicate that the Earth-Sun L1 and Venus-trailing
surveys achieve similar levels of integral completeness for potentially
hazardous asteroids larger than 140 m; placing the telescope in an interior
orbit does not yield an improvement in discovery rates. This work serves as a
necessary first step for the detailed planning of a next-generation NEA survey.
