The Complete Book of Spaceflight: From Apollo 1 to Zero Gravity

known as Losat-L, was built by the Naval Research
Laboratory as a target for ground lasers, to investigate
atmospheric distortion and compensation methods.
Low-power lasers were beamed from the Air Force Maui
Optical Station and picked up by onboard infrared and
phased detectors. A laser then locked onto a reflector
mounted on a 46-m boom to acquire the satellite and the
sensor array returned data on the laser coverage, allowing
the laser’s adaptive optics to be adjusted to compensate
for atmospheric distortion. The payload included ABE,
the Army Background Experiment, an instrument that
monitored background levels of neutron radiation in
order to be able to discriminate between warheads and
decoys, and the Ultraviolet Plume Instrument (UPI) to
track rocket plumes.
Launch
Date: February 14, 1990
Vehicle: Delta 6925
Site: Cape Canaveral
Orbit: 463 × 480 km × 43.1°
Size: 2.4 × 1.4 m
Mass: 1,430 kg
Lageos (Laser Geodynamics Satellite) 229
L5 Society An artist’s impression
of the interior of a space
colony, 1.5 km in circumference,
located at the L5 point. NASA
Lacrosse
American all-weather reconnaissance satellites. Unlike
previous spy satellites, Lacrosse uses side-looking radar to
peer through clouds to form images of the target area.
Equipped with a very large radar antenna powered by
solar arrays almost 50 m across, Lacrosse may be able to
resolve detail on the ground as small as one m—good
enough to identify and track major military units such as
tanks or missile transporter vehicles. However, this high
resolution would come at the expense of broad coverage,
and would be achievable over an area of only a few tens
of square kilometers. Thus, Lacrosse probably uses a variety
of radar scanning modes, some providing highresolution
images of small areas, and other modes
offering lower-resolution images of areas covering several
hundred square kilometers. Lacrosse 1 was launched on
December 2, 1988, by the Space Shuttle, and was followed
by Lacrosse 2 on March 8, 1991, and Lacrosse 3
more than six years later, both launched by Titan IVs
from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Lageos (Laser Geodynamics Satellite)
Solid, spherical, 60-cm-diameter passive satellites that provide
reference points for laser ranging experiments. Lageos