Turion is proud to announce its first ground observation sensor node for wide-angle electro-optical sensing: This multi-modality sensing capability is now fully operational in California, designed to support wide-area, dawn/dusk low Earth orbit space surveillance through electro-optical, event-based, and polarimetric sensing. This product line represents a strong compliment to Turion’s space-based remote sensing capability with the DROID satellite fleet. 

On June 11, 2025, the Office of Space Commerce announced that Turion’s ground observation segment had been selected as a part of the Traffic Coordination System for Space’s (TraCSS) Collision Avoidance (COLA) Pathfinder. OSC’s announcement stated the following regarding the program:  

“this is the latest in a series of targeted, agile acquisitions under the TraCSS program that support OSC's implementation of Space Policy Directive 3.  The “COLA gap” represents a critical challenge in space situational awareness (SSA): the period immediately after launch when traffic coordination services have uncertain or incomplete positional data on newly deployed satellites. After evaluating a strong pool of proposals from across the SSA industry, the program has awarded contracts to a select group of vendors whose collective capabilities show considerable potential to close the COLA gap and improve safety during the earliest phases of satellite deployment.” 

Turion’s ground segment capability advances in-space domain awareness by using novel sensing architectures. Turion’s utilization of event cameras in this wide-angle observation system has the capability of high temporal resolution observations on faint objects.  

“Typical electro-optical cameras require an exposure time to gather light before reading off an image. Event cameras have independent pixels that record positive and negative photon flux events at an incredibly high temporal resolution, equivalent to almost 10,000 frames per second of a typical camera. Event cameras are sensitive to low-light settings and can track objects very well,” said Alex Rogers, Turion’s Lead Machine Learning Engineer. 

Turion is also utilizing polarimetric sensing with wide angle sensors in order to expand the dimensionality of light curves and provide further analysis on spacecraft behavior. Polarimetric cameras are able to determine light polarization angles coming off objects in images. This is particularly useful when you want to understand complex light behavior reflecting off complex objects.   

This capability leverages the combined power of these sensing modalities to form a comprehensive and multi-dimensional observation platform. Operating twice daily at dawn and dusk, the system is estimated—based on simulation and early field data—to be capable of observing approximately ten percent of the LEO catalog per day, subject to weather and visibility constraints. 

These sensors then feed into to Turion’s Starfire software platform for analysis, AI-based characterization, and integration with space-based sensing data. This provides unique advantages in SDA where analysis like shape estimation, tumbling rates, and orientation are relevant in adversarial or even camouflaged objects.