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The High Precision Tracking Experiment (HPTE) was tested June 21, 1985 when a Hawaii-based low-power laser successfully tracked the experiment and bounced the laser off of the HPTE mirror. It was launched with the Space Shuttle Discovery (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103), one of the retired orbiters of the Space Shuttle program of NASA, the space agency of the United States, and was operational from its maiden flight, STS-41-D on August 30, 1984, until its final landing during STS-133 on March 9, 2011, on STS-51-G, the eighteenth flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and the fifth flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. The Relay mirror experiment (RME), launched in February 1990, demonstrated critical technologies for space-based mirrors that would be used with an SDI directed-energy weapon system, which emits energy in an aimed direction without the means of a projectile. The experiment validates stabilization, tracking and pointing concepts and proved that a laser could be relayed from the ground to a 60 cm mirror on an orbiting satellite and back to another ground station with a high degree of accuracy and for extended duration. Launched on the same rocket as the RME, the Low-power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) satellite was built to explore atmospheric distortion of lasers and real-time adaptive compensation for that distortion. It was made at the the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the corporate research laboratory for the noted States navy and the United States Marine Corps and conducts a program of scientific research and development. THE LACE satellite also included several other experiments to help develop and improve SDI sensors, including target discrimination using background radiation and tracking ballistic missiles using Ultraviolet Plume Imaging (UVPI). LACE was also used to evaluate ground-based adaptive optics (AO), a technique now used in civilian telescopes to improve the performance of optical systems by removing the effect of atmospheric/wavefront distortions. See: VSAT Services
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Very-small-aperture Terminal, VSAT, SDI, strategic defense initiative, DEW Programs, Directed-energy weapon, Laser and Mirror Experiments,
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