Military

Navy, Air Force develop laser-retargeting technology

06/20/02 - MONTEREY, Calif. (AFPN) -- Global power projection in the United States took a giant step forward with the dedication recently of a Navy/Air Force research laboratory focused on developing technology for a revolutionary new satellite able to receive and re-target laser beams anywhere on Earth.

The jointly sponsored lab will be located at the Naval Postgraduate School here and is part of a long-term agreement between NPS and the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., to coordinate research and accelerate the development of new spacecraft.

In the new NPS/AFRL Optical Relay Spacecraft Laboratory, joint team leaders successfully demonstrated the laser tracking ability of a prototype twin-mirror bifocal relay spacecraft designed to receive "up" beams and refocus them via a "steering" mirror and second main mirror onto targets of choice on the ground. If fielded, a constellation of 27 of the twin-mirror satellites will orbit at about 445 miles sometime in the next decade.

"This is breakthrough work toward our goal of instantaneous global power with global reach," said Dr. R. Earl Good, director of AFRL's directed energy directorate. "It gives NPS students the opportunity to do cutting-edge research, and it's a wonderful opportunity for us all."

The bifocal relay mirror spacecraft project, in fact, owes its very existence to NPS officer students.

"This all started as a student spacecraft design project," said Aeronautics and astronautics professor Brij Agrawal, director of the NPS Spacecraft Research and Design Center. "After the students did an excellent job in preliminary design of the spacecraft, everything started to go up."

In 2000, Agrawal and the NPS/AFRL team won the prestigious National Reconnaissance Office Director's Innovation Initiative Award, and with it $340,000 to further develop the technology. Over the next five years, the new laboratory and research effort will receive about $3.5 million in Air Force and Missile Defense Agency funding.

"What you're seeing is the only integrated space control/optical technology demonstration anywhere," said Air Force Capt. Mary Hartman, program manager for AFRL's relay mirror technology program. "This project not only brings together our two technical areas. It also brings the Navy and Air Force together on an important, high-profile national program."

AFRL research scientists have the lead on the project's optics, while NPS has major responsibility for spacecraft control.

"The bifocal relay mirror spacecraft project marries the best expertise of our two groups -- NPS's in spacecraft attitude and vibration control and AFRL's in high technology optics," said Agrawal.

Good said the most likely future system will be a mix of ground-based, airborne, and space-based lasers plus the beam-retargeting space-based mirrors.

According to project managers, the bifocal mirror tracking and targeting system is likely to first be tested on a lighter-than-air balloon or airship as a stepping stone to the ultimate space platform.

Agrawal also stressed that the technology being developed for the space-mirror project is widely applicable to a number of other areas, such as reconnaissance, space optics, space communications, remote imaging, enhancing night vision capabilities, camouflage detection and penetration, chemical warfare agent detection and identification, theater wind profiling, tunnel and underground structure detection and cloud ceiling detection.

One of the most intriguing potential uses of the space mirrors would be as giant flashlights to light up future battlefields.