The U.S. Navy and the Air Force are sponsoring a research laboratory
focused on developing technology for a revolutionary new satellite,
able to receive and re-target laser beams anywhere on earth.
The lab is located at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey,
Calif.
The school’s superintendent, Rear Adm. David R. Ellison,
said that this project is the “epitome of the joint, interdisciplinary
research efforts that will drive our nation’s future military
capabilities, and which none of us could do alone.”
In the newly christened NPS/Air Force Research Lab Optical Relay
Spacecraft Laboratory, researchers 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 715 kilometers sometime in the next decade.
“This is breakthrough work towards our goal of instantaneous
global power with global reach,” said R. Earl Good, director
of the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory,
at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., which is co-sponsoring the project.
The Bifocal Relay Mirror Spacecraft project owes its very existence
to NPS officer students. It started as a student spacecraft design
project. In 2000, 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.
During the next five years, the new laboratory and research effort
will receive approximately $3.5 million in Air Force and Missile
Defense Agency funding.
“What you’re seeing is the only integrated spacecraft
control/optical technology demonstration anywhere,” said Air
Force Capt. Mary Hartman, program manager for AFRL’s relay
mirror technology program.
AFRL scientists have the lead on the project’s optics, while
the Navy’s corporate university has the 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 Aeronautics and Astronautics Prof. Brij Agrawal,
director of the NPS Spacecraft Research and Design Center.
Good said the most likely future system would be a mix of ground-based,
airborne, and space-based lasers in addition to the beam-retargeting
space-based mirrors.
“This is not an either-or proposition,” he said. “They’re
complementary.”
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 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.
For more information on NPS Bifocal Relay Spacecraft Research Program,
or on the NPS-AFRL Optical Relay Spacecraft Laboratory, contact
Prof. Agrawal at agrawal@nps.navy.mil—Barbara Honegger, Naval
Postgraduate School Public Affairs Office