Questions tagged [laser]
Questions regarding devices which emit focused beams of electromagnetic energy.
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Deorbit LEO debris with a higher orbit laser?
A couple of days ago I asked Can a laser be used to clear the launch path of a rocket? turns out this is not a good plan but the
answer by Hobbes suggests the idea of clearing debris with a laser is ...
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Can a laser be used to clear the launch path of a rocket?
Military grade lasers shooting down incoming missiles have been in the news since Ronald Reagan was the US president. The problems, as I recall are mostly about diffusion in atmosphere.
The Kessler ...
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How accurate can near earth asteroids be tracked?
To get more statistical significance for the suspected flyby-anomaly (or to refute it), it would be desirable to track as many hyperbolic earth flybys to within 1mm/s as we can get. Can we track ...
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Characteristics of the inter-satellite optical link
I'm currently diving into this topic and as I understand from the brief search there are two main types of inter-satellite link: radio and optical. As I can see, one of the main distinction of optical ...
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How does QUESS, China's quantum communications satellite experiment, relay entangled signals?
China launched the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) on the satellite called MOZI or Micius today, which will be used for quantum communications between China and Europe. Popular Science ...
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Are we actually that close to techniques of accelerating probes to speeds like a quarter $c$?
As recent research has been started by a team around Stephen Hawking under the name Breakthrough Starshot they are going for accelerating little probes up to 0.2~0.25$c$. There isn't that much ...
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Can you launch a probe to the Moon using a laser propelled craft?
Take a very light object, propel it with a laser source on Earth at a constant acceleration.
Can this object reach the Moon?
Could this be more reliable than a rocket? (supposing solar panel energy ...
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What are these structures on the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflector (LRRR) arrays for?
In Local expansion measured, near zero via Lunar Ranging - what about deep space probes? I used images of the retro-reflector arrays that were left on the moon by Apollo 11, 14, and 15. The Lunar ...
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laser propulsion from a lagrange point? [closed]
Simply put, would it make sense to place laser in space to propel a solar sail? Thinking about solar sails, and the inefficiencies of sending a laser through the atmosphere, I wondered if it made ...
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Does any satellite communicate only through laser?
I have read (here) and heard (on astronomy podcast) that radio waves decay or are indistinguishable the more distance they travel.
Do any of man made satellites communicate with Earth solely by ...
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Doing an experiment to point a laser to the moon and back
After reading this question: I got an itch to to test out the mirrors myself (and maybe record whole process to irritate conspiracy nuts).
What equipment would I need? I assume a high powered laser ...
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What's the current timeline for NASA's Mars orbiter laser communications?
Dr. Jim Green, Director, NASA Planetary Science Division, mentioned during his "The Martian": Science Fiction & Science Fact talk for the 18th Annual International Mars Society Convention (you can ...
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Can't we use laser transmitters instead of large radio dishes on deep space probes?
Isn't it possible to use a laser as an "antenna" that transmits data? This would save quite a lot of mass since you don't need a large dish.
The only problem I can think of is how would you modulate ...
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Boeing US pat. 9,068,562: inertial confinement fusion engine (D-T pellet gun)
A team of Boeing employees (Budica/Herzberg/Chandler 1) have patented an inertial confinement fusion engine (the basic principle going back to C.D.Orth's VISTA from 1999 and Rod Hyde's 1983 ICF ...
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Power requirements for zapping debris with lasers from ISS
My understanding is that the ISS provides 75-90 kWatts of power, so enough power for a 1 second Megawatt pulse for zapping debris in about 15 seconds.
Question is: is this right, have I over looked ...
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