[Laser] Laser retroreflectors on Sats

[James Whitfield]

For those interested, I suggest you check out Project Starshine.  While its 
website does not seem to have been updated since 2003, therefore is probably 
idle, it is an example of things that have been done and serious proposals 
for things to do.  Starshine 1, 2, and 3 flew.  Starshine 4 was built but 
was bumped from its ride to orbit.

The first bird was a LEO and had approximately 1,000 one inch diameter 
mirrors built by school students world wide and students were asked to 
observe, track, and report as part of the experiment.  The second, third, 
and fourth added 31 retroreflectors to the mirrors.  While the purpose is 
unknown to me, my limited imagination leads me to speculate that someone 
related to the project was planning to, and probably did, use lasers on 
them.

Also among the Project Starshine material, I found a proposal to put a 
mirror on an available unused hand rail of the Space Station for the purpose 
of sending Morse Code messages to schools requesting such along the ground 
track of ISS as it passed.

This project included the efforts of more than 40,000 school around the 
world.  It seems to have developed some useful scientific results, in large 
part from data collected by students without expensive equipment.

James
 n5gui