laser range finder

11.21.09

NASA Shoots Laser From Maryland to Hit the LRO Spacecraft, 250,000 Miles Away

By Clay Dillow Posted 09.24.2009 at 3:30 pm 10 Comments

Nice Shot: NASA Goddard's Laser Ranging Facility hits the LRO in stride 28 times per second across a quarter million miles of space. Tom Zagwodzki/Goddard Space Flight Center

Fancy yourself a sharpshooter at laser tag? The team at Goddard Space Flight Center might just have you beat. After all, since launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they've been firing a laser across 250,000 miles of space, hitting the minivan-sized LRO as it orbits the moon at nearly 3,600 miles per hour. It's no lucky shot either; they do it 28 times per second.

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Battlefield: Space

Military hardware has orbited Earth for decades, but no actual weapons have ever been deployed in space. That may change soon and it may launch a major space race

By Dawn Stover Posted 10.28.2005 at 1:00 am 0 Comments

So this is how the war in space might begin: not with a bang but a clank. On April 15, more than 450 miles above Earth, an experimental NASA spacecraft called DART (Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) fired its thrusters and closed in on a deactivated U.S. military communications satelliteand then gently bumped into it.

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Spy Satellites That Spy On Satellites: First Photos

The XSS-11, an Air Force satellite that can automatically track and orbit around other objects in space, downloads its first pictures to the public.

By Dawn Stover Posted 10.26.2005 at 1:00 am 0 Comments

This is the first photograph taken by a microsatellite of another object in space that has ever been released to the general public. The object near the center is the upper stage of a Minotaur I rocket that was used to launch the Experimental Satellite System-11, commonly known as XSS-11. The photograph was taken by the digital "witness camera" aboard XSS-11, a dishwasher-size microsatellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory.

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