Allen Thomson wrote:
On Jan 5, 10:50 am, Pat Flannery wrote:

That's pretty clever; using the same technique as a laser-guided bomb
against a satellite.


I'm not sure what they're talking about, but terrestrially-based semi-
active guidance is certainly a possibility.

The thing about ASAT is that there are so many ways to do it.

The way I read it, the laser will hit the target satellite while its in
the the shadow of the Earth, then the ASAT will be launched and home in
on the laser light reflected off of it.
This should be a very workable system, as if all you want to do is light
up the satellite with a laser rather than damage it, your laser beam can
be of fairly low power.
As far as countermeasures to this system, the satellite could either
eject reflective decoys and hope the ASAT would home on one of those, or
shoot out some sort of gas or dust cloud that would get between it and
the ASAT (or between it and the laser) so the reflected laser light
couldn't be seen or is diffused enough so the ASAT can't home on it.
Also, if the satellite is equipped with laser detectors (I'm fairly sure
our reconsats are after the Soviet attempts to blind their optics with
lasers) it could fire thrusters and move, so as to make the laser lose
its tracking lock on it.

Pat