This battle station was pieced together by technicians, slaves, and titanic robot factory machines.

You can't blame Luke Skywalker for mistaking the Death Star for a small moon when he first saw it. There had never been anything like the Empire's immense space station. It is a sign of just how evil the Empire was that they'd construct a weapon so huge.

The Death Star is 120 kilometers in diameter. Much of its interior space is devoted to supporting its superlaser. The eye-like saucer on the Death Star's surface is a huge laser cannon. Eight individual beams merge to form one giant ray of destruction capable of destroying an entire planet. The Death Star wiped out the planet Alderaan, killing millions of peaceful citizens.

	Leia watches in horror as her home planet is destroyed by the Death Star battle station, as Darth Vader looks on.

Grand Moff Tarkin came up with the idea of the Death Star as a way of enforcing Imperial law and order in the galaxy. It was a way for the Empire to rule through fear - no planet would oppose the Emperor if they knew he had the ability to destroy it.

Rebel spies managed to steal complete blueprints to the Death Star. Using these plans, they found a weakness in its design. At the end of a trench there was a small thermal exhaust port -- only two meters wide. This port led all the way to the heart of the Death Star's power supply, its main reactor. If a Rebel pilot could to launch his proton torpedoes directly into the port, the explosion would cause a chain reaction that would destroy the station.

When the Empire discovered that the Rebel's secret base was on Yavin 4, the Death Star traveled through hyperspace and arrived to destroy the outpost. Rebel starfighters had only 30 minutes to try and hit the thermal exhaust port before the Death Star fired. One pilot, Luke Skywalker, made it just in time.