I suspect in order to stay focused on such distances you’d need extremely flat mirrors. Like, telescope grade stuff.
I doubt the mirrors they have is even within an order of magnitude flat enough.
You might even need adaptive mirrors to deal with atmospheric distortion. Also, they would have to move relatively quickly and very precisely (read: an impossible combination) to track satellites in low orbit. Plus, you could only hit satellites that crossed overhead at a relatively high angle.
But yeah, one solar tower plant did a stunt where they reflected an image made of sunlight at the ISS and an astronaut took a picture. They didn’t melt.
where they reflected an image made of sunlight at the ISS and an astronaut took a picture
got a link to said picture? it may make for a good meme template. I saw that the chinese did that kind of ‘pixel art’ with there own near identical solar thermal plant
They’re misremembering Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti photographing the light dot where the mirrors shine at in the power plant. They were NOT shining it at the ISS.
https://www.jpost.com/omg/article-715675
https://twitter.com/AstroSamantha/status/1562833775293186049
I’m no optical physicist, but based on empirical evidence of not melting due to light arriving from a huge ball of thermonuclear fire 8 light minutes away (and sure it’s not exactly focused), I propose a hypotesis that light-based energy transfer in atmosphere is very lossy and not feasible as a weapon.
Which is perfect for this community, of course.
So, the light from the sun is very spread out. This is why it doesn’t hurt you. When you take almost all of the light from a large area and focus it to a point, it starts to add up fast.
You can test this with a leaf and a magnifying glass. The mirrors in this scenario are acting as a giant lens.
The biggest question is whether the mirror array is large enough to redirect enough energy to make it though the atmosphere.
It would likely be probable if the facility was specifically designed to do this.
