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ISS May Get Laser Cannon

posted by martyb on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the sharks-not-included dept.

frojack writes:

ExtremeTech has an article suggesting the International Space Station may add a Laser "CAN-non" in coming years.

The business end of the proposed laser system would be a Coherent Amplification Network (CAN) laser that can focus a single powerful beam on a piece of debris. The laser would vaporize the surface of the target, causing a plume of plasma to push the object away from the station and toward the atmosphere.

This is still just a proposal, but a test version of the laser might be deployed to the station in a few years.

The Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO) is scheduled to be installed on Japan's ISS module in 2017. This is not by design a space-junk-killing piece of equipment. It's intended to monitor the atmosphere for ultraviolet emissions caused by cosmic rays.

However it might serve as an experimental platform for testing (at much lower power) the capability of slight deflections of orbiting space junk.

Also covered here.

We discussed the general problem of space junk here on Soylent News at the beginning of the month.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by iwoloschin on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:28PM

    by iwoloschin (3863) on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:28PM (#185072)

    The projectile is photons. Unless you're measuring them as waves, in which case it's more like one of those air cannon things that we all use to knock papers off our co-workers' desks.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:48PM (#185075)

    Of course a laser is the most wave-like light you can have (having well-defined phase and not well defined particle number).

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:40PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:40PM (#185091)

      You could easily measure the number of photons with a sensitive detector that clicks once for every photon.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:29PM (#185165)

      High degree of coherence doesn't make it any more wave-like then if all your waves had random phase.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:20PM (#185158)

    I see. So my laser pointer or flashlight IS a cannon then.

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:39PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:39PM (#185202) Homepage Journal

    Mr. Dick Chenery says:

    can·non
    ˈkanən/
    noun
    noun: cannon; plural noun: cannons; noun: cannon bit; plural noun: cannon bits

            1.
            a large, heavy piece of artillery, typically mounted on wheels, formerly used in warfare.

    Except for not having wheels, I think it qualifies for the term, while your air gun does not.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org