this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I doubt it, calibrating a focal point to a stationary, relatively nearby target, say a hundred metres or so, is fairly simple, but to apply that to a satellite, a moving target (with a changing velocity if we are talking about a satellite in an eccentric or molnya orbit) either in high or low earth orbit, that's a distance of between 200-20,000kms.

Even a satellite in perfectly circular orbit is constantly changing its distance relative to a point on the ground, meaning you have to constantly adjust the focal point of the mirrors. At 250km, your field of mirrors (say, a 100m circle of them) would describe about 0.023 degrees of curvature, almost completely flat.

And that's before accounting for atmospheric attenuation and scattering of the light.

On a clear night with many gw of laser energy, maybe you could peel the skin off a low orbit satellite, but even that would be impractical.