Think you’re a real sharpshooter?
Hitting an object about the size of a minivan shouldn’t be a problem, then.
The catch? Your target is 250,000 miles away.
Oh, and it’s moving at 3,600 miles per hour.
That feat may be impossible for a single man, but NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages to achieve it 28 times per second. The target? Its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, which orbits the moon.
The target practice is part of the first laser ranging effort to track a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit on a daily basis. The goal is to provide distance measurements accurate to 10 centimeters, or about four inches — far more accurate than current microwave stations, which track the LRO within 65 feet of accuracy.
Hitting an object about the size of a minivan shouldn’t be a problem, then.
The catch? Your target is 250,000 miles away.
Oh, and it’s moving at 3,600 miles per hour.
That feat may be impossible for a single man, but NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages to achieve it 28 times per second. The target? Its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, which orbits the moon.
The target practice is part of the first laser ranging effort to track a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit on a daily basis. The goal is to provide distance measurements accurate to 10 centimeters, or about four inches — far more accurate than current microwave stations, which track the LRO within 65 feet of accuracy.
Comment -- The thought that crossed my mind when I read this is that if NASA can hit a fast moving Orbiter with a laser, then the Air Force certainly has laser technology to hit a missile fired from Iran or North Korea.
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