ILLUSTRO: Detection of Adversary Lasing Activity with an Ultra-Low Swap Architecture

ILLUSTRO is a hardware/software package which fuses Nalu’s single photon detection technology into SM’s cost-off-the-shelf (COTS) space qualified computing architectures. ILLUSTRO aims to detect lasing events, instantaneously, with a low SWaP detector architecture that can be easily integrated into large national assets and future small-sat USAF architectures. Such a capability would allow for U.S. satellite assets to transition into safe-mode during lasing events, and alert ground operators to adversary offensive action. The ILLUSTRO receiver’s extremely high timing precision waveform sampling ability coupled with its digital integration technology allows for several different CONOPS for Space Situational Awareness (SSA). ILLUSTRO’s low-power & versatile ability to simultaneously identify pulsed and continuous lasing events, would provide high resiliency value to all future USAF space assets.