The Death Star is a fictional massive space station and superweapon featured in the Star Wars space-opera franchise. Constructed by the autocratic Galactic Empire, the Death Star is capable of obliterating entire planets, and serves to enforce the Empire's reign of terror. It appears as a hundreds of kilometers wide mobile space station that has the shape of a spherical moon or planetoid.
Appearing in the original film Star Wars (1977), the Death Star serves as the central plot point and setting for the film, and is destroyed in an assault by the Rebel Alliance during the climax of the film, with the prequel film Rogue One (2016) and the television series Andor (2022–2025) exploring its construction. A larger second Death Star is being built in the events of the film Return of the Jedi (1983), featuring substantially improved capabilities compared to its predecessor, before it is destroyed by the Rebel Alliance while under construction.
Since its first appearance, the Death Star has become a cultural icon and a widely recognized element of the Star Wars franchise. It inspired numerous similar superweapons in fiction as well as in other Star Wars works. The film The Force Awakens (2015) introduces Starkiller Base, a planet (Ilum) converted by the First Order into a Death Star-like superweapon. While more powerful and technologically advanced than both Death Stars, it is also destroyed by the Resistance. The film The Rise of Skywalker (2019) introduces the Final Order, a massive fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers built by the Sith Eternal, individual warships each carrying "planet-killing" weapons; the film also features the remains of the second Death Star, on the ocean moon of Kef Bir.
Origin and design According to franchise creator George Lucas, his initial outline for the Star Wars saga did not feature the Death Star in the portion that would be adapted as the first film. When he set to creating the first act of this outline as a feature, he borrowed the Death Star concept from the third act.George Lucas commentary, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, dir. George Lucas, (DVD, 20th Century Fox, 2004). Event occurs at 3.
Although details, such as the superlaser's location, shifted between different concept models during the production of Star Wars (1977), the notion of the Death Star being a large, spherical space station over in diameter was consistent in all of them. George Lucas gave the original task of designing a "Death Star" to concept artist and spaceship modeler Colin Cantwell, who had collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Empire of Dreams, a documentary about the filming and production of Star Wars, Cantwell revealed that the Death Star, built by John Stears,"John Stears, 64, Dies; Film-Effects Wizard" . New York Times. Retrieved January 28, 2013John Stears; Special Effects Genius Behind 007 and R2-D2"" . Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 28, 2013 was originally supposed to be a perfect sphere. The model was constructed in two separate pieces, however, and wasn't fitting together as planned, resulting in a depression around the equator. Hoping to save himself a week of work to fill the depression, Cantwell suggested a trench to Lucas, which liked the idea.Colin Cantwell obituary | Star Wars The buzzing sound counting down to the Death Star firing its superlaser comes from the Flash Gordon serials. Portraying an incomplete yet powerful space station posed a problem for Industrial Light & Magic's modelmakers for Return of the Jedi. Only the front side of the model was completed, and the image was flipped horizontally for the final film. Both Death Stars were depicted by a combination of complete and sectional models and matte paintings.
Special effects
The grid plan animation shown during the Rebel briefing before the Death Star attack in A New Hope was an actual computer-graphics simulation developed by Larry Cuba at the University of Illinois Chicago alongside computer graphics researcher Tom DeFanti. George Lucas had recruited Cuba for the project after becoming familiar with his and Gary Imhoff's work with CalArts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
After filming was complete, the original model, as well as one of the surface setpieces, were to be thrown out, but they were eventually salvaged.
The Death Star explosions featured in the Special Edition of A New Hope and in Return of the Jedi are rendered with a Praxis Effect, wherein a flat ring of matter erupts from the explosion.
Depiction The original Death Star was introduced in the original Star Wars film, which later had elements of its backstory explored in the prequel films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the animated series The Clone Wars, Rebels and The Bad Batch, the 2016 anthology film Rogue One, and the series Andor. The second Death Star appears in Return of the Jedi, and a similar superweapon, Starkiller Base, appears in The Force Awakens.
Both the original and second Death Star were hundreds of kilometres wide, spherical moon- or planetoid-shaped mobile space stations, reminiscent of a world ship or artificial planet, designed for massive power-projection capabilities, capable of destroying an entire planet with a 6.2×1032 J/s power output blast from their superlasers.
Original Death Star The original Death Star's completed form appears in the original Star Wars film, known as the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, or Project Stardust in Rogue One; before learning the true name of the weapon, the Rebel Alliance referred to it as the "Planet Killer". Outside of the highest echelons of the Empire, it was known as Project Celestial Power and to the wider citizenry as the Energy Initiative, with its stated purpose to provide Imperial worlds with sustainable energy sources. Commanded by Governor Tarkin, it is the Galactic Empire's "ultimate weapon", a huge spherical battle station in diameter capable of destroying a planet with one shot of its superlaser.
The film opens with Princess Leia transporting the station's schematics to the Rebel Alliance to aid them in destroying the Death Star. To mark the Death Star being fully operational, Tarkin orders the Death Star to destroy Leia's home world of Alderaan in an attempt to press her into giving him the location of the secret Rebel headquarters; she gives them the location of Dantooine, which housed a now-deserted Rebel base, but Tarkin has Alderaan destroyed anyway as a demonstration of the Empire's resolve. Later, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, and R2-D2 (who were intended to arrive at Alderaan on board the Millennium Falcon) are pulled aboard the station by a tractor beam, where they discover and manage to rescue Princess Leia. As they make their escape, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself whilst dueling Darth Vader, enabling the others to flee the station. Later, Luke returns as part of a fighter force to attack its only weak point: a ray-shielded particle exhaust vent leading straight from the surface directly into its reactor core, discovered previously from the stolen schematics. Luke is able to successfully launch his X-wing fighter's torpedoes into the vent, impacting the core and triggering a catastrophic explosion, which destroys the station before it can annihilate the Rebel base on Yavin 4.
The Death Star's schematics are visible in the scenes on Geonosis in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, evidently designed by Geonosians led by Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and is shown early in construction at the end of Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. The Clone Wars Legacy story reel from the unfinished Crystal Crisis on Utapau episodes reveals that General Grievous went to Utapau prior to Revenge of the Sith in order to acquire an enormous kyber crystal to power the Death Star's superlaser.
As depicted in Rogue One and Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel (2016), the Death Star was worked on by a team of engineers sequestered on the rainswept world of Eadu, overseen by Orson Krennic, the Director of Advanced Weapons Research for the Imperial Military. Under Krennic's supervision, the project was beset by constant delays, and he forcibly recruited weapons designer Galen Erso (the father of Jyn Erso, the film's protagonist) to complete the design. The Death Star scientists sought to fuse kyber crystal shards into larger structures and used those crystals to amplify energy into a stable beam powerful enough to destroy an entire planet. In the Disney+ series, Andor, set after the novel but before the film, prisoners of the Imperial Prison Complex in Narkina 5, including Cassian Andor, who was sent to the facility under the alias Keef Girgo, assembled fasteners during their shifts, which was revealed in the post-credits scene of the first season finale to be parts built for the superlaser dish.
The second season of Andor depicts the Ghorman project, a covert working group formed in 4 BBY and led by Krennic designed to carry out the suppression of the planet Ghorman with propaganda campaigns in place throughout the galaxy designed to turn public opinion on the Ghor people and justify the Empire's need to gouge-mine the planet of the mineral kalkite, which was necessary to coat the Death Star's reactor lenses. At the suggestion of Imperial Security Bureau Supervisor Dedra Meero, who was given control of the project, the Empire allowed the local Ghorman Front resistance group to grow bolder in their anti-Imperial activities and give the Empire justification for their crackdowns. Their increased resistance culminated in the Ghorman Massacre in 2 BBY, where the Empire violently suppressed countless peaceful protesters in the planet's capital Palmo. The genocide fully radicalized Senior Senator Mon Mothma against the Galactic Empire, causing her to publicly condemn and name Palpatine as the perpetrator, accusing him of "unprovoked genocide" and being "the monster who will come for us all soon enough" and immediately being declared a traitor, though she was able to escape with the aid of Cassian Andor and later Gold Squadron and the Spectres, allowing her to formally organize the Rebel Alliance in a speech over Dantooine.
The 2014 book Star Wars: Tarkin details the life of Grand Moff Tarkin and prominently features the Death Star. Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel tells the story of the development of the Death Star's superweapon by Galen Erso and Krennic's deception of him. It also reveals how Poggle worked with Krennic on the project but then turned on him. In the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the two-part episode "Ghosts of Geonosis" hints that the Geonosians were nearly wiped out to extinction out of the Empire's need for secrecy. Saw Gerrera, having been sent to Geonosis to investigate, deduces that the Empire possesses a superweapon and resolves to discover the Death Star as depicted in the two-part episode "In the Name of the Rebellion". Though it is a dead end, Saw learns that the weapon is powered by kyber crystals taken from the Jedha system.