Beam control optics in the Airborne Laser system stabilize and shape the beam emitted by the chemical oxygen iodine laser en route to the nose turret of the aircraft.
(Credit: Russ Underwood, Lockheed Martin)The Airborne Laser may have lost favor in Washington, but it's still going strong at Edwards Air Force Base.
Boeing, the prime contractor for the directed-energy weapons system, said Thursday that the ABL's high-energy laser earlier this week was fired in flight for the first time--though not at an external target. Instead, in a flight over California, the laser beam traveled only as far as an on-board calorimeter, which measured the beam's power. Boeing didn't say what that measurement was, but the system is generally referred to as "megawatt-class."
The Airborne Laser in flight.
(Credit: Boeing)The one-of-a-kind ABL was built to test out and ultimately show off what a laser beam can do to a ballistic missile fired in anger. The goal, if and when all systems are go, is for the laser-equipped aircraft to home in on an ICBM while it's still early in its trajectory, holding the laser beam on the missile long enough to rupture its skin and thus knock it out of commission.
Ambitious plans for the Airborne Laser, however, have been considerably scaled back. Earlier this year, in revamping the Pentagon's budget and operations priorities, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that a second prototype would not be built.
The core of the existing ABL is a chemical oxygen iodine laser, or COIL, and it's hardly man-packable machinery. The COIL system itself takes up the back half of a modified 747-400F, while the front half of the jumbo jet is given over to the beam control/fire control system.
Given that an aircraft in flight can be a fidgety beast, the ABL's ability to maintain precise alignments was a notable accomplishment, according to a Thursday press release from Northrop Grumman, which designed and built the high-energy laser:
ABL has to keep all of the powerful laser's optical components perfectly positioned as the aircraft vibrates and flexes during flight...Since we were unable to fly the kind of large concrete pads used to hold a ground-based laser's optics in place, we had to isolate the COIL's optics from the structure but also maintain alignment. So the team developed an optical bench isolation system that isolates disturbances caused by normal aircraft operations while maintaining alignment to the gain medium, or the source of a laser's optical power. It's like an automobile's 'smart suspension' that keeps the car riding smoothly at the same level over a bumpy road.
Last week, in a continuing series of piecemeal tests, the ABL engaged in an in-flight trial run against an instrumented target missile. The aircraft used its infrared sensors to locate the missile, then fired a pair of solid-state illuminator lasers that tracked the missile and gauged atmospheric conditions. "This test demonstrates that the Airborne Laser can fully engage an in-flight missile with its battle management and beam control/fire control systems," Michael Rinn, Boeing vice president and ABL program director, said in a statement. "Pointing and focusing a laser beam on a target that is rocketing skyward at thousands of miles per hour is no easy task."
A number of increasingly complex tests still lie ahead for the ABL, including firing the high-energy laser through the Lockheed Martin-developed beam control/fire control system and out of the nose-mounted turret. Before the end of the year, Boeing expects to do a full-fledged intercept test against a ballistic missile.
A Northrop Grumman Space Technology engineer in Redondo Beach, Calif., monitors a solid-state laser, in a photo from January 2007.
(Credit: Northrop Grumman)From the week gone by on the directed-energy weapons front: defense contractor Northrop Grumman reported that it got a solid-state laser to fire a beam with a potency of 105.5 kilowatts.
For the ray-gun wing of the military-industrial complex, the 100-kilowatt threshold is a major milestone, marking the entry point to weapons-grade laser weapons. Adding to the appeal is that solid-state lasers are much more compact, and less noxious, than chemical laser systems such as the one in the works for the 747-centric Airborne Laser.
The technical details of Northrop's achievement break down this way, starting with a modular, "building block" approach that bodes well for scalable systems, the company said:
For building blocks, the company utilizes "laser amplifier chains," each producing approximately 15kW of power in a high-quality beam. Seven laser chains were combined to produce a single beam of 105.5 kW. The seven-chain JHPSSL laser demonstrator ran for more than five minutes, achieved electro-optical efficiency of 19.3 percent, reaching full power in less than 0.6 seconds, all with beam quality of better than 3.0.
Adding an eighth chain that the system was designed for would increase laser power to 120 kilowatts, Northrop says.
Where this test saw five minutes of continuous operation for the laser, altogether the system has been operated at above 100 kilowatts for a total duration of more than 85 minutes.
The efforts are part of the Pentagon's Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program.
Even though 100 kilowatts has long been the "proof of principle" sought for weapons systems, Northrop says that "in fact, many militarily useful effects can be achieved by laser weapons of 25 kW or 50 kW, provided this energy is transmitted with good beam quality, as our system does."
Of course, this is still a laboratory laser system and not a field-tested, ruggedized product. "It is still a little heavy and a little big," Dan Wildt, vice president of Northrop's directed energy systems program, told the LA Times.
Shiny on the outside, sparkly on the inside? This is Northrop's laser weapon system demonstrator.
(Credit: Northrop Grumman)That's probably a significant understatement. Says Noah Shachtman at Wired's Danger Room blog of the news from Northrop:
Does that mean energy weapons are a done deal? Hardly. There are still all sorts of technical issues--thermal management and miniaturization, to name two--that have to be handled first. Then, the ray gunners have to find the money. The National Academies figure it'll take another $100 million to get battlefield lasers right.
In a separate post, Shachtman reports on what's involved in getting specific laser systems ready to go over the next several years.
Earlier this year, Boeing said that it had used a "kilowatt-class" solid-state laser to shoot down a UAV from a ground-based system. The company hopes that the Airborne Laser, meanwhile, will do its first-ever aerial target shoot sometime in 2009.
Armadillo Aerospace's Pixel lifts off on Day One of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge on October 25.
(Credit: Video: X Prize Foundation; Screenshot: Jennifer Guevin/CNET News)Armadillo Aerospace, a team led by Doom video game creator John Carmack, has won $350,000 in prize money in a contest to improve lunar flight.
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is a $2 million contest that challenges teams to build a lunar vehicle and then simulate a 90- to 180-second moon flight and landing. The event is hosted by the X Prize Foundation and sponsored by NASA. And the end goal is to open the door for developing a fleet of lunar ferries that could carry people and payloads between lunar orbit and the moon's surface.
The contest, in its third year, was held at the Las Cruces International Airport in New Mexico over the weekend. On Saturday, Mesquite, Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace successfully won Level One of the challenge, which requires a rocket to take off from a launch area, ascend to an altitude of 150 feet, hover for 90 seconds, then touch down safely at a landing pad 150 feet away. The team then had to repeat the flight in reverse within two and a half hours.
To win Level Two, teams have to double the hover time and land on a simulated lunar surface dotted with craters and boulders. Armadillo attempted to pass that feat on Sunday, but wasn't able to pull it off. So $1.65 million worth of prize money is still on the table for teams to claim.
There are nine teams registered for the competition. Armadillo has been the most successful team so far. In 2006, a landing gear malfunction kept it from winning Level One. Last year, it missed the time limit by 7 seconds.
Here's video of a wrap-up of Day One of the competition, which shows Armadillo's successful flight.
Here's video of Day Two's activity, in which John Carmack explains what went wrong with their Level Two attempt.
Ten teams are signed up once again to compete in the NASA-sponsored Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a $2 million contest to simulate a moon flight in the New Mexico desert.
The X Prize Foundation, the event's host, announced the team lineup Tuesday, saying it is confident that this year, after two years of unsuccessful attempts, NASA will award the prize money. However, in a potentially cautionary move, the 2008 event in late October at New Mexico's Holloman Air Force Base will be closed to the public for the first time. People can watch it live via the Web.
Here is one of Armadillo's two rovers, named Texel, pictured after a crash during a test run in September 2007.
(Credit: Armadillo Aerospace)The NASA challenge, which is designed to spur technology innovation for sending astronauts back to the moon by 2020, asks teams to build a lunar vehicle and then simulate a 90- to 180-second moon flight and landing. In the past two years, only one competitor has been able to lift off and hover properly, but that team, Armadillo Aerospace, failed to complete the required task twice without issue.
Armadillo Aerospace, a Mesquite, Texas-based team led by Doom video game creator John Carmack, is back this year. Nine teams were signed up for the contest last year, but Armadillo was the only one ready to fly. In 2007's contest, Armadillo flew one 91-second flight successfully, but as it was preparing to launch a second time to complete the challenge, the team discovered a crack in its engine.
The 8-year-old Armadillo Aerospace, which in recent months said it plans to participate in the Rocket Racing League's upcoming "vertical drag races," confirmed its participation on its Web site. "We will do a bunch of hover tests, and a practice run in Oklahoma before the event, but that will be about it," according to the company.
Other returning teams include Tarzana, Calif.-based BonNova, whose team leader Allen Newcomb designed the flight software for Ansari X Prize winner SpaceShipOne, and Solana Beach, Calif.-based father and son team Unreasonable Rocket. Paragon Labs, a Denver, Colo.-based team of four engineers; Emeryville, Calf.-based Phoenicia; and Chicago, Ill.-based TrueZer0 are also signed up to compete in the event.
Four other teams requested anonymity.
For the first time this year, the X Prize has separated the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge from the X Prize Cup, it's annual celebration of space innovation. That event will be postponed until 2009.
Ten teams are signed up once again to compete in the NASA-sponsored Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a $2 million contest to simulate a moon flight in the New Mexico desert.
This story was inadvertently double-posted. For the full story, click here.
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