LINEAR (for Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research)
was/is an astronomical survey for near-Earth asteroids,
begun in the late 1990s by the US Air Force and Lincoln Laboratory.
It has discovered over 200,000 SSSBs (including
well over a hundred comets).
Circa 2010, Lincoln Laboratory developed
the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST),
a purpose-built 3.5-meter ground telescope to discover and
track man-made space objects. The SST was turned over to the
US Air Force, which also continued the watch for near-Earth objects (though one no longer
sees the name LINEAR associated with the search). The SST effort is now
part of the since-formed United States Space Force (USSF), and the SST is now located
in Australia, run in collaboration with the Royal Australian Air
Force.