Not all realms of observation require an 8-meter telescope. Some, such as space surveillance of asteroids and man-made satellites, are too important to ignore, yet obviously inappropriate to consign to the new generation of large telescopes. The United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), with Boeing, Rocketdyne Technical Services (RTS), has developed a low-cost, rapidly deployable surveillance telescope concept called Raven which takes advantage of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) telescopes, detectors and software. The development of the Raven concept was originally a response to a recognized need to support the timely follow- up of asteroid discoveries. Early astrometric tests using Raven telescope in the 12- to 16-inch diameter range proved to be comparable in accuracy to the much larger telescopes of the existing space surveillance network. Observations of man-made satellites have also produced quality results. A high level of productivity is achieved by automating all of the observing functions and much of the data reduction and analysis. Performance data in both the areas of asteroid and satellite metrics will be presented, and performance parameters discussed.
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