Astrobotic lunar surface sensor to track cislunar traffic and security

by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 04, 2025

Astrobotic has secured a NASA Small Business Innovation Research Phase I award to develop Clavius-S, a visible-band imaging sensor designed to detect and track spacecraft in low lunar orbit from the Moon's surface in real time. The modular payload can fly on a range of lunar lander missions and will be integrated into future LunaGrid surface power nodes, creating a networked space domain awareness service to monitor objects 1,000 kilometers or more above the Moon.

Rising traffic in lunar orbit from government and commercial missions is increasing the need for new tracking capabilities that support conjunction assessment, object identification, and security monitoring around the Moon. Ground-based sensors on Earth face range and brightness limitations, while orbital sensors must deal with stray light unless they operate below targets with large baffles, whereas surface-based sensors gain from closer range, reduced reflected-light interference, and stable observation platforms.

Clavius-S is being developed to operate through lunar night thermal extremes, communications constraints, and dust exposure while maintaining continuous tracking performance. Deployed on U.S. lunar landers and Astrobotic's planned LunaGrid power nodes, the sensors will sit near overhead traffic and can be oriented to reduce glare from reflected lunar light, improving observations of low lunar orbit spacecraft and debris, including non-transmitting objects.

"Clavius-S brings a new level of awareness to the lunar environment," said Dr. Andrew Horchler, Chief Research Scientist at Astrobotic. "As more spacecraft travel to the Moon, we need tools that help operators understand what is in orbit, where it is moving, and whether it is a threat to critical missions. This sensor product is built to provide that insight from the surface."

The sensor uses Astrobotic's onboard compute element with hardware-accelerated computer vision to detect objects moving at orbital speeds in real time. The NASA award builds on more than a decade of Astrobotic work on autonomous optical navigation sensors and lunar mission hardware, along with five years of development in space domain awareness and orbital debris detection technologies.

Astrobotic's SSA sensors employ custom high-throughput optics tailored for space surveillance, highly sensitive imaging detectors, and current-generation high-performance space computers. They use advanced algorithms to search for and detect very faint objects and spacecraft in cislunar space and in Earth orbit.

With multiple Clavius-S units distributed across the lunar surface, Astrobotic plans to offer space domain awareness as a service for government and commercial users. In parallel, the company is preparing an orbital variant, Clavius, to support civil, defense, and commercial customers that need monitoring across the broader cislunar volume.

Astrobotic ultimately aims to field a scalable family of sensors operating from the Moon's surface, throughout cislunar space, in Earth orbit, and from other vantage points where persistent tracking of space objects is required.