BLITS ("Ball Lens in The Space").
The BLITS nanosatellite was launched alongside the Meteor-M(1) spacecraft into a sun-synchronous 800km polar orbit by Russia in September 2009. BLITS is a 7kg, 17cm diameter glass ball with two kinds of refractive glass, a low-refraction-index glass shell surrounds a high-refraction-index glass core. One half of the surface of the whole sphere has an aluminum coating. BLITS was used as a target by the International Laser Ranging Service for precision laser ranging experiments. Its expected 5 year mission ended when it was struck by debris from the destroyed Chinese satellite Fengyun 1C. (Fengyun 1C was used as an anti-satellite weapon target by the Chinese government owners, some time before the collision in Jan 2013.)
<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Penyulap" title="User:Penyulap">Penyulap</a>
2013-03-15 02:40:13
<span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>