Building the Future of Cislunar Surveillance: In Space Assembly and Manufacturing-Enabled Sensor Architectures for Large-Volume Space Situational Awareness

Recent decades have seen increased interest in Cislunar operations. To ensure the safety of flight and peace of operations in the Cislunar domain, a capability to provide current and predictive knowledge of resident space objects in the domain is required, which, in turn, necessitates a dedicated space situational awareness (SSA) system. However, SSA in the Cislunar domain is notoriously difficult to achieve due to the inherently large volume and the chaotic nature of orbits in the regime. These characteristics produce challenges in establishing persistent monitoring and limit predictive capabilities. To address these challenges, this study detailed a trade space for achieving effective Cislunar SSA (CSSA) by leveraging improved capabilities offered through very large (5–10× the size of currently available space-based apertures) radio frequency and optical sensors. The approach presupposes a paradigm shift in space operations that enables on-orbit manufacturing of large, precise structures. We show that access to very large apertures enables timely, persistent, and accurate CSSA through higher signal-to-noise ratios, resolutions, and detection ranges in the operational environment that could not otherwise be achieved by leveraging a proliferated network of many smaller, conventionally sized sensors.