The Track at Big Distances with Track-Before-Detect (TBD2) program aims to enable continuous space-based detection and tracking of objects in cislunar space on relevant timelines.
Cislunar space refers to the vast area from the edge of Earth’s geosynchronous orbit (approximately 36,000 km/22,000 miles away) to the Moon (approximately 384,000 km/239,000 miles away).
The effort aims to increase the safety of cislunar commercial and civilian traffic contributing to the peaceful use of space for the benefit of all nations and enabling a sustainable space ecosystem. To accomplish this goal, TBD2 seeks to advance the state of the art for signal processing algorithms so that when combined with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or quasi-COTS optical sensors and/or focal plane arrays (FPAs), they can:
- Detect and track faint objects at gigameter (Gm) distances (i.e., more than a billion meters away)
- Operate using available onboard processing capabilities
- Do so on relevant timelines (within hours)