Satellite radar cross-sections is a complex function of satellite structure, design, materials, instantaneous attitude, (radar) frequency, polarization, and if has moving parts, configuration, just to name a few.
Assume I've written a similar paragraph for visible, NIR, and thermal IR, and whatever other electromagnetic probes are used for satellite tracking.
But I am wondering, for a generic 1U cubesat built from COTS (commercial, off the shelf) cubesat parts, do they end up being sufficiently reliably tracked to get TLEs good enough to keep track of where they are, establish regular communications, and avoid collisions?
I am assuming the answer would be yes, since the 1U is a popular standard for experimental satellites, and there are several businesses with plans to deploy hundreds more 1U cubesats collective hopes to deploy hundreds of cubesats in the future.
Of course one could imagine a "science project" called stealth-cube, 3D printed out of free space impedance matched resistive polymer, with plastic optics to bring sunlight into small, oddly-shaped organic photovoltaics, so let's not include extremes.
But in general are 1U cubesats sufficiently detectable to get at least minimally usefully predictive public TLEs, updated retularly?