Hitler's death star: How the Nazis planned to send killer satellites into orbit to fry their enemies from space

Nazi scientists tried to make a satellite which used the sun's rays to scorch cities
They drew up plans to build a 'sun gun' which would have acted as a huge mirror
The plans were similar to the infamous Death Star, which featured in Star Wars

The Nazis had planned to built a giant one-mile wide 'sun gun' to burn enemy cities to ashes during the Second World War.

Scientists tried to create the huge satellite which acted as a large mirror that would have used the sun's rays to scorch the earth's surface.

Technical experts from the US Army made the fascinating discovery which highlighted the Nazi's shocking plans.

If successful, the unique creation would share similarities with the infamous Death Star, the spherical battle station constructed by the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

The one-mile-wide mirror would have been able to focus the power of the sun onto a target earth (pictured)

The giant mirror would have been assembled in space and would have also contain a manned space station

The Nazis wanted their satellite, which was dubbed 'the space mirror', to revolve around the earth 5,100 miles above the equator, according to a 1945 article in Life magazine.

The article, which was titled 'Nazi Men of Science Seriously Planned To Use a Man made Satellite As A Weapon for Conquest', revealed American scientists analyzed the Nazi military arsenal after the Second World War.

German scientists are believed to have thought they could use the sun's rays to obliterate US cities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The magazine article stated that the Germany's plans for the space mirror began with good intentions but that quickly changed in 1939.

The plans for the mirror were drawn up and according to the article it would 'burn an enemy city to ashes or to boil part of an ocean'.

WHAT WAS HITLER'S 'SUN GUN' AND COULD IT HAVE WORKED?

Adolf Hitler hatched a plan to build a weaponised satellite

During World War II, Adolf Hitler hatched a plan to build a weaponised satellite that he could use to attack his enemies from Earth's orbit.

The mile-wide 'Sonnengewehr', or sun-gun, would have been armed with a giant mirror to burn entire cities to ashes or boil part of an ocean.

The mirror would have fried targets by focussing heat rays from the sun onto the Earth's surface.

Like a magnifying glass, at certain angles a mirror's reflection can focus separate light waves, causing them to add up or 'superpose'.

Together the rays then create a light wave of far greater intensity than its parts, meaning more heat energy is generated.

The Nazis faced many obstacles to building their super weapon, and it is unlikely German engineers would have ever achieved Hitler's vision.

The weapon would have to have been constructed in orbit in pre-assembled sections, but in the 1940s no heavy rocket existed that could carry the parts into orbit.

Engineers would have also struggled to generate a beam powerful enough to destroy structures on Earth.

At the 620-mile (1,000 km) orbit proposed, much of the energy focussed by the weapon would have sapped away before hitting our planet.

Engineers could have averted this by placing the satellite in a lower orbit, but here Earth's surface would have presented a faster moving target as the planet rotated, rendering targets almost impossible to hit.

After it was finished, rockets could have been used 30ft hole in the disk as an air lock to unload men

The plans were drawn up by the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler (pictured), before the Second World War

But the magazine stated that the biggest issue the Nazis faced was that there was not a rocket heavy enough to ferry the parts for the station into orbit.

It added: 'Whether the sun gun would have accomplished what they expected, however, is another matter.'

It has since been proved that space reflectors do and can work. In 1993, Russian scientists launched one to beam solar power to earth by reflecting sunlight.

Their space mirror called Znamya, which was 65ft in diameter, was able to beam a full moon's worth of light across the earth's surface.

However, it seems the Nazis were not the first to come up with the idea of using the sun as a lethal weapon.

Greek astronomer Archimedes drew up plans for huge burning mirrors which ultimately set the Roman fleet alive during the Siege of Syracuse in 214–212 BC.

NASA ENGINEER SAYS THE EMPIRE COULD HAVE REPURPOSED AN ASTEROID TO CREATE THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

A Nasa engineer proposed a method to efficiently build a Death Star, and it's not the way the Empire would have done it.

Instead of constructing the massive weapon from nothing, by shooting materials out from a planet, an asteroid could be used to provide all of the essential building blocks.

The Empire is doing things the hard way; using an asteroid to build a Death Star would require much less work, as metals and organic compounds would already be there.

Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains in a Wired video that a Death Star can't just be built by 'launching a bunch of stuff off of a planet.'

A Nasa engineer proposed a method to efficiently build a Death Star, and it's not the way the Empire would have done it (pictured)

He suggests that it would be much easier to use materials that are already there.

An asteroid contains metals, organic compounds, and water, all of which would be necessary for Death Star production.

With these materials already there, a person would have, 'all the building blocks you would need to build your family Death Star,' he explains in the video.

Muirhead won't be building his own Death Star anytime soon, but the engineer will be helping Nasa to get up close and personal with asteroids, while working on the Asteroid Redirect Mission.

This mission will land a robot on an asteroid, and collect a boulder from the surface. The boulder will be placed into orbit around the moon, and later recollected by a crewed mission, who will take samples.

Muirhead says he expects the landing to happen around 2023.

In Star Wars, sub-light starships are able to zip through asteroid fields, manoeuvring quickly to avoid getting struck.

The Empire is doing things the hard way; using an asteroid to build a Death Star would require much less work, as metals and organic compounds would already be there.

If successful, the unique creation would share similarities with the infamous Death Star (pictured)

Nasa hasn't yet reached these capabilities, but Muirhead explains that a slower-moving scenario is possible. They key, he says, is ion propulsion.

The starships in the movies can sense moving objects ahead of them and react quickly, he says in the video, turning away from danger by use of powerful ion thrusters.

On the Asteroid Redirect Mission, Nasa has four ion engines, capable of 'low thrust,' which could take a craft through the spaces between the main belt asteroids.

To go further than that would require an advanced power system. In order to manoeuvres through the Galaxy, Star Wars taps into fission and fusion.