[FPSPACE] Alabama Researchers Work On Laser Systems To Deflect Asteroids

[E.P. Grondine]

Office of News Services
University of Alabama-Huntsville

For more information:
Ray Garner,


2/20/2007

UAH researchers working on laser system to deflect
asteroid on collision path with Earth

A team of scientists and engineers at The University
of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are conducting research that could
one day save humanity from asteroids threatening Earth.

UAH Laser Science and Engineering Group (LSEG),
headed by Dr. Richard Fork, professor of Electrical and Computer 
Engineering, is
conducting research into characterizing and deflecting asteroids that
may endanger Earth.

It sounds like science fiction, but Fork, who has a
doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than
40 years of experience working with lasers, said someday it could be
possible to locate a laser in space or on the moon to look at the properties 
of
asteroids and perhaps alter their trajectories away from Earth.

The research has students excited about using lasers
for space-related applications. Graduate student Blake Anderton wrote
his master's thesis on "Application of Mode-locked lasers to asteroid
characterization and mitigation." Undergraduate Gordon Aiken won a prize
at a recent student conference for his poster and presentation "Space
positioned LIDAR system for characterization and mitigation of Near Earth
Objects." And members of the group are building a laser system "that is the
grandfather of the laser that will push the asteroids," Fork said.

Anderton said his thesis discusses "a way to look at
asteroids at maximum range, which means early detection." According to
his calculations, an asteroid could be characterized up to 1 AU away (1.5
x 10 to the 11 meters). Arecibo and other radar observatories can only
detect objects up to 0.1 AU away, so in theory a laser would represent a 
vast
improvement over radar.

Anderton, who grew up on a farm in Moulton, Ala., is
an engineer at Raytheon Corp. in Huntsville. He said the project was a good
one for him at this point in his career because of his interests in
optical and laser physics. At Raytheon he's involved in radar work for the
National Missile Defense radar systems, but he's poised to move into optical
and laser physics work, so the masters degree in electrical and computer
engineering with an emphasis on optics helped him prepare for his next
job assignment.

The thesis was a stepping stone that "opened doors"
for him at his job, he said. But Anderton added he has a personal interest
in the asteroid mitigation problem.
"We only have one Earth and you don't want to lose it."

Anderton shared a LSEG office with undergraduate Gordon Aiken.
The two students talked about their interests. The result of
their collaboration is a sharing of knowledge in their academic research
pursuits.

Aiken started out in mechanical engineering, then transferred to optical
engineering when he discovered that UAH is one of just a few colleges in the
U.S. with an undergraduate program in optical engineering.

When Fork spoke of his research to one of Aiken's engineering classes,
Aiken expressed interest and landed a REU grant (Research
Experience for Undergraduates) for the summer of 2006.

At the end of the REU, Aiken made a presentation on
what he'd learned, and Dr. Vernhard Vogler, of UAH's Chemistry Department,
suggested Aiken submit his poster to a new annual UAH student research
conference, held last year.

Aiken won the prize for best undergraduate poster and presentation.
"I really like optics. I wanted to get into the field of working with
lasers," said the sophomore, who served as a medic in the Army before coming
to UAH. "The school has been amazing for me ... If you show interest,
they're going to find something for you to do. This has all fallen into
place for me." Putting graduate students together with undergraduates is a
great idea, he noted.

"It's a good mixture of talent."

Fork said the current research relates back to work
he performed in the  mid-1980s, when he and other researchers at AT&T
Bell Laboratories developed the first femtosecond lasers. They used one of 
the
lasers to ablate material by ultra-intense laser pulses with femtosecond 
time
resolution ("Femtosecond imaging of melting and evaporation at a photo
excited silicon surface," M. C. Downer, R.L. Fork and C.V. Shank, Journal of 
the
Optical Society of America B2,595-599 (1985)).

"The laser we are developing now is also being developed to ablate
materials," Fork said, but the device would be "a substantial distance" from
the target. The system includes an argon laser, a mode-locked Ti-sapphire
oscillator, a regenerative Ti-sapphire amplifier, a doubled neodymium-yag
pulsed laser and helium-neon line-up lasers, according to Dr. Fork.

The short-term goal of the work is "to amplify femtosecond pulses to high
peak power at high average power for remote sensing," using unique features
associated with the high pulse intensity, Fork said.

The work is funded by the U.S. Army and involves a local company that
employs several of Fork's former students. The research does not concern
characterizing or deflecting asteroids, but Fork sees a connection.

"My vision is that this system is the progenitor of the laser that could
characterize and deflect asteroids," he said. (UAH)

IMAGE CAPTION:
[http://uahnews.uah.edu/newsImages/optics1407.jpg
(66KB)]
UAH students Dane Phillips (foreground) and Gordon Aiken perform optics
research in a campus laboratory. Phillips is a doctoral student while Aiken
is an undergraduate working on his optical engineering degree.

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