That's not a moon
Isn't the orbiting battle station supposed to fire the giant laser at the planet?
Did somebody have the plans the wrong way up?
A satellite's radio-communications failing is a crisis if you need to keep it from drifting off station, so a pair of boffins suggest firing up an Earth-bound laser as a backup comms channel. The idea comes from Xinchen Guo of Purdue University and Jekan Thangavelautham of Arizona State University, in a paper they've prepared …
Using a retroreflector to get the light back to the source and an electro-optic modulator reduces required laser power and increases the bandwidth. As a bonus, the device only needs to point at Earth, not a specific base station. If you send laser beams from multiple sites, all sites get (the same) data back.
So basically, Aldis lamps in space? Clever.