Starfire Optical Range

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The Starfire Optical Range, as viewed from a helicopter.

Three green lasers being fired at a single spot in the sky from the Starfire Optical Range.

A FASOR used at the Starfire Optical Range for LIDAR and laser guide star experiments is tuned to the sodium D2a line and used to excite sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere. FASOR stands for Frequency Addition Source of Optical Radiation, and for this system it is two single mode and single frequency solid state IR lasers, 1.064 and 1.319 microns, that are frequency summed in a LBO crystal within a doubly resonant cavity.

Starfire Optical Range is a United States Air Force research laboratory on the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their primary duty, according to their official website, is to "develop and demonstrate optical wavefront control technologies", and they are a division of the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Among their optical equipment, they have a 3.5 meter telescope (which they claim is "one of the largest telescopes in the world equipped with adaptive optics designed for satellite tracking"), a 1.5 meter telescope, and a 1.0 meter beam director.

According to an article published on May 3, 2006 in the New York Times, research is being conducted at the laboratory into how to use ground-based lasers to disable satellites; that is, as an anti-satellite weapon. According to the article, research is being conducted so that the ground-based laser would be able to use adaptive optics to send up a distorted beam which would then be focused by atmospheric turbulence onto its target.