1992

OMEGA-24 Fires Its Last Shot
At 5:09 pm on December 18, 1992, the last target shot was fired on the original 24-beam OMEGA laser. Operations of OMEGA, which had been operated in various configurations including 6-beam and 24-beam infrared and 24-beam ultraviolet and had been fired approximately 25,000 times since its first shot in 1978, were suspended to support the upgrade of OMEGA to a 60-beam, 30-kJ, UV laser. OMEGA was successfully upgraded on schedule and within budget and met or exceeded all its specifications.

Cryogenic Target Handling System
General Atomics, in collaboration with LLE and Los Alamos National Laboratory, began work on designing a new cryogenic target handling system to support hydrodynamically equivalent cryogenic target experiments on OMEGA. These targets required very thick (~100‑μm) DT layers in very thin (~a few microns) polymer containers, with extremely tight uniformity specifications. The key system requirements for the OMEGA Cryogenic Target Handling System (CTHS) were to fill as many as 12 targets per week at gas pressures as high as ~1500 atm, with cryogenic layer uniformity controlled with either beta layering or other D₂– or DT-ice smoothing techniques. The target had to be placed within 5 μm of target center, and the cryogenic protective shroud had to be retracted, in a predetermined manner, <100 ms prior to the shot. Work on this system began in 1992 and the initial design was completed and delivered to LLE in 1999.