Innocent Astronomy or Secret Weapons Pgm?
That laser has several uses, both innocent scientific research, as well as an evil secret military one!
Under the innocent category, that yellow-orange laser is used to excite sodium atoms in the top of the upper atmosphere, creating an artificial "guide star". They can then use this to continuously measure all of the atmospheric distortion in all of the layers of the atmosphere (from the telescope to the edge of space), and then use this information to control "adaptive optics" on the telescope, correcting for this atmospheric distortion and essentially giving the telescope "perfect vision".
(This atmospheric distortion normally limits the image quality of ground-based telescopes, and is why the Hubble Space Telescope pics look so fantastic - no atmosphere in space!
)
However, this thing has a secret and far more sinister military purpose as well! Not only can it correct distortion for light coming
down from outer space (from stars and planets and such), it can also correct light beams
going the other direction. It can "pre-correct" a high-power laser beam on the ground, and was secretly designed to be...
a Star Wars, Ground-Based Laser Space Weapon, designed to shoot frickin' satellites out of the sky!!!
If you doubt that, I would also point out that...
* The name of this facility is the
Starfire Optical Range
* The dome of the main telescope is designed to fully retract, in order to allow high-speed tracking of incoming targe...'um, I mean, really, really, REALLY fast-moving comets!
* It is owned by the U.S Air Force, and is located in a secured area on the Kirtland Air Force Base.
* It is part of the Air Force AFRL
Directed Energy Directorate.
* The side-mounted, comparatively low-power (50W?) yellow laser is just for the adaptive optics, the power beam would come through that huge reflector. They publicly fired a 15kW laser for a visiting foreign film crew just to show-off, God only knows what kind of power levels they are working with behind locked doors!
If you are still not convinced, I should also point out that...
This weapons program was accidentally exposed when the Air Force mistakenly put a little TOO much detail :
into one of their public budgetary requests. (Oops!) This included -
Relocating the program from a "misc." space funding category, and re-listing it under -
"Advanced Weapons Technology".
They also referred to the large 3.5 meter telescope (you know, that large, rotatable open-frame gizmo in the pics that looks like something from a Star Wars movie? Well, guess what...), calling it instead a -
"Weapon-class beam director"!
3.5 meter reflector telescope - the
ultimate weapons-grade collimator!
-----
BTW, it seems the same outfit they are part of is involved in a number of fun toys we know and love! -
For example, like hand-held lasers? check this out! -
($#&^! won't let me post link yet - will edit later)
Their High-Energy Microwave division are the same folks who brought us Active Denial (i.e. - pain ray), which I read they are now trying to put into a C-130 aircraft! (Yikes!!!
)
Their Laser Division are the people who invented the megawatt-class COIL laser that is being used in the ABL (the laser plane to shoot-down ICBMs).
And the division that runs Starfire (Optics), in addition to being tasked with "developing technologies to accurately put high energy laser energy on target" (yea, that sounds like an astronomy project to me! :
), are now also involved in an adaptive-optics version of another old idea...
"Relay Mirrors" to redirect high-energy beam weapons!
a technology some of you may recall seeing demonstrated in the humorous 1980's Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd movie, "Spies Like Us".
;D
