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". 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. (left) and
Darth Vader (right) overseeing the construction of the first Death Star in
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith 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's final episode,
Rix Road, to be parts built for the superlaser. 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 and a "lying executioner" 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. In the lead-up to
Rogue One and
A New Hope during the final three-episode block of
Andor, the Death Star's existence was discovered among Meero's files by ISB Lieutenant Supervisor and Axis network spy Lonni Jung as a front for
Project Celestial Power, which was publicly known as the
Energy Initiative with its stated intent to provide sustainable and unlimited energy to worlds, mainly those ravaged by the Clone Wars. While Jung was killed by
Luthen Rael to eliminate him as a loose end and later Rael himself being euthanized by Kleya Marki to prevent his interrogation, the information was eventually passed on to Alliance High Command, though they doubted the weapon's existence due to their strained relationship with the Axis network spymaster, which was verified by Cassian Andor during the events of
Rogue One.
Rogue One proper focuses on a small band of rebels under the titular improvised callsign and their actions in stealing the plans containing the weakness exploited in
A New Hope. The Death Star is first used to destroy Jedha City, both as a response to a violent insurgency on the planet and as a display of the Death Star's operational status. Tarkin assumes control over the Death Star while Krennic investigates security breaches in the design project. It is subsequently revealed that Galen discreetly sabotaged the design by building a vulnerability into the reactor. After the Death Star plans are stolen from the Scarif vault, Tarkin fires the Death Star's superlaser on the base, killing Krennic, as well as Jyn Erso and her small band of rebels. The Death Star was defended by thousands of turbolasers, ion cannons and laser cannons, plus a complement of seven to nine thousand TIE fighters, along with tens of thousands of support craft. It also had several massive docking bays, including dry docks capable of accommodating
Star Destroyers. A hologram of the original Death Star is briefly visible in a scene at the Resistance base in
The Force Awakens and used as a means of comparison with one from the
First Order's own superweapon, Starkiller Base.
Second Death Star The 1983 film
Return of the Jedi features the
DS-2 Orbital Battle Station under construction as it orbits the forest moon
Endor, which houses a shield generator protecting the station. The second Death Star is substantially more advanced and more powerful than its predecessor, and the critical weakness found in the first Death Star has been removed—the Rebel Alliance's only hope is to destroy it prior to its completion.
The Emperor and Darth Vader
send the Rebels false information that the station's weapons systems are not yet complete in order to lure the Alliance fleet into a trap, resulting in the decisive Battle of Endor. In fact, the station's superlaser is fully operational, and it begins firing on and destroying Rebel
capital ships during the battle. A ground assault team led by
Han Solo with the help of the Endor-native
Ewoks successfully manages to disable the shield generator, allowing Rebel pilots
Wedge Antilles and
Lando Calrissian to fly into the station (using Han's
Millennium Falcon) and fire on its reactor, destroying the station in another catastrophic explosion. An early draft of
Return of the Jedi features two Death Stars at various stages of completion. According to the
Star Wars Encyclopedia, the second Death Star had at its "north pole ... a heavily armored 100-story tower topped by the Emperor's private observation chamber." The size of the second Death Star has not remained consistent among the various writers for the
Star Wars franchise, with some stating it shared the first Death Star's radius and others claiming it was much more massive with a radius. The most recent figure established in 2017 by Ryder Windham gives the second Death Star a radius of . The second Death Star is featured on the cover of the book
Star Wars: Aftermath (2015), which also features many flashbacks to the destruction of the second Death Star, as well as the events directly after its destruction. One of the main characters in the story personally escaped the explosion of the Death Star. The destruction of the second Death Star was also shown in holograms in the book. The 2015 comic book
Star Wars: Shattered Empire also explores the days following the destruction of the second Death Star from the perspective of
Poe Dameron's parents, who were pilots during the event. The video game
Star Wars: Uprising also takes place during the aftermath of the second Death Star's destruction, and features a hologram of its description on multiple occasions in and out of cutscenes. Part of the wreckage of the second Death Star appears in
The Rise of Skywalker (2019), on the ocean moon
Kef Bir.
Rey visits the wreckage to obtain the Emperor's wayfinder, a device that points the way to his hidden lair on
Exegol.
Similar superweapons The 2019 comic
Star Wars #68 reveals that the Rebels considered creating their own version of a Death Star by luring Star Destroyers to a
tectonically unstable planet and setting it off with proton detonators.
Starkiller Base The Force Awakens features
Starkiller Base, a Death Star-like superweapon built by the
First Order, an autocratic regime considered to be the successor of the Empire. Significantly larger than both previous Death Stars, the superweapon was constructed out of an existing planet called
Ilum instead of being assembled in deep space. The base draws its raw firepower by
harnessing energy directly from a nearby star. Unlike its predecessors, Starkiller Base is capable of firing on and destroying multiple planets at once from extreme range—in the film, the First Order obliterates the five planets in the
Hosnian Prime system, at that time the
capital of the
New Republic. Starkiller Base is protected by a defensive
shield that blocks all objects traveling at slower-than-light speeds;
Han Solo,
Chewbacca, and
Finn exploit a vulnerability by bypassing the shield at
faster-than-light speeds, successfully infiltrating the base and sabotaging its shields. Subsequently, an
X-wing assault led by
Poe Dameron and
Nien Nunb destroys the superweapon by damaging the base's thermal oscillator and fuel cells, resulting in a catastrophic release of energy from the planet's core. As Resistance forces flee, the planet implodes and forms a star. The name Starkiller Base pays homage to the early drafts of the original
Star Wars film, referring to Luke Skywalker's original surname. Coincidentally, the name "Starkiller" is an alias given to Galen Marek by Darth Vader in the 2008 game,
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. During early concept development, artist
Doug Chiang envisioned the superweapon's gun as set inside a volcano, which X-wings would have to enter in a maneuver similar to the trench run on the Death Star in the original film.
Sith Star Destroyers In
The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth installment in the series, the resurrected Darth Sidious is revealed to have constructed the
Sith Eternal's fleet of
Xyston-class Star Destroyers, the Final Order, over the Sith planet
Exegol. Each warship is armed with an axial superlaser capable of destroying planets; Sidious uses one of the Star Destroyers to destroy the planet
Kijimi as a
show of force. At the end of the film, the Resistance launches an offensive against the Sith Eternal forces, including the Sith fleet. Aided by reinforcements from across the galaxy, the Resistance defeats the remaining Sith forces by destroying the onboard superlasers, which ignited the ships reactors and destroyed them one by one. The Resistance also destroyed the
Resurgent-class Star Destroyer
Steadfast and the navigation signal that the fleet needed to exit the planet due to the unstable nature of the atmosphere. The first level of LucasArts'
Dark Forces (1995) gives mercenary
Kyle Katarn the role of stealing the plans that are subsequently given to Leia.
Steve Perry's novel
Shadows of the Empire (1996) describes a mission that leads to the Rebels learning of the second Death Star's existence, and that mission is playable in LucasArts'
X-Wing Alliance space flight simulator (1999). In
Rogue Planet (2000) a first design called "Expeditionary Battle Planetoid" is put forward by
Raith Sienar. The Death Star itself is a controllable weapon for the Empire in the
Rebellion (1998) and
Empire at War (2006) strategy game. In
Battlefront II (2005), the player participates in a mission to secure crystals used in the Death Star's superlaser. Another mission in the game tasks the player with acting as a
stormtrooper or Darth Vader in an attempt to recover the plans and capture Leia. The first Death Star under construction acts as the final stage in the video game
The Force Unleashed (2008). The first Death Star's construction is the subject of
Michael Reaves and Steve Perry's novel
Death Star (2007), which depicts the many politics and hidden agendas behind the massive project, from its construction up until its final destruction. The first Death Star's hangars contain assault shuttles, blastboats, Strike cruisers, land vehicles, support ships, and 7,293
TIE fighters. It is also protected by 10,000 turbolaser batteries, 2,600
ion cannons, and at least 768 tractor beam projectors. There is a broader range of figures for the second Death Star's diameter, ranging from 160 to 900 kilometers.
DS-X Prototype Battle Station In the
Legends works
Death Star (2007),
Dark Empire II,
Jedi Search and
Champions of the Force, an experimental Death Star prototype,
DS-X (a durasteel frame surrounding a reactor core, superlaser, engines and a control room) was conceived by Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin as a test bed for the first Death Star. It was constructed by Bevel Lemelisk and his engineers at the Empire's secret Maw Installation. The prototype measured 120 kilometers in diameter. Its superlaser was only powerful enough to destroy a planet's core, rendering it an uninhabitable "dead planet". The targeting system on the prototype was never calibrated and the superlaser was inefficient, leaving the weapon's batteries drained - Engineers in the control room claimed it would take 10–15 minutes to recharge batteries after the first shot was fired. The prototype had no interior except a slave-linked control room, hyperdrive engines and other components; the station operated with skeleton-crew of 75 personnel. The prototype was later destroyed when it was drawn into the black holes surrounding the Maw cluster itself.
Death Star III In the Disney attraction
Star Tours – The Adventures Continue, guests can travel inside an incomplete Death Star during one of the randomized ride sequences. In the original Star Tours, a
Death Star III is seen and destroyed during the ride sequence by the New Republic.
Leland Chee originally created the third Death Star to explain why a Death Star is present on the
Star Tours ride when both of the stations in the film were destroyed. The station being built near the Forest Moon of Endor like the second Death Star before. It is similar to an original concept for
Return of the Jedi, where two Death Stars would have been built near Had Abbadon (then the Imperial capital world). The
Habitation spheres, based on the Imperials' spurious claims that they were designed strictly for peaceful purposes, were suggested by some fans to have been the origin for the Death Star III. This was later revealed to be the case in Part 2 of the StarWars.com Blog series
The Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire. In the Expanded Universe game
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star, a random HoloNet entry states that one of the residents of the Death Star is simply staying there until he can afford to stay at the third Death Star.
Other superweapons In the original Marvel
Star Wars comic series (1977–1986), a superweapon called "The Tarkin" is built. It is described as being similar to the Death Star but with more energy. Darth Vader commands it and Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, , and R2-D2 sabotage it with Lando's help. It is finally destroyed by an Imperial officer attempting to use an ionic weapon to both attack the escaping Rebels and assassinate Vader. Later in the series, a nihilistic group attempts to use a weapon to dislodge a planet from its orbit and cause others to do the same in a chain reaction, thereby destroying the entire universe. In the
Dark Empire comic series (1991–95), the reborn Emperor Palpatine's flagships
Eclipse and
Eclipse II Super Star Destroyers (Star Dreadnoughts) have a miniaturized version of the Death Star superlaser. The first
Eclipse was under construction at the time of the Emperor's death at Endor; shortly thereafter, the incomplete
Eclipse was briefly captured by the Zann Consortium during a battle over Kuat, using its superlaser against the Empire and Rebels and emerged victorious against both; it was quickly abandoned following the battle as it was too large a target for the Rebels to ignore. The vessel was retrieved by remnants of the Empire and completed, and later served as the flagship of the resurrected Palpatine. It was destroyed by a Force storm enhanced by Luke and Leia, who had been brought aboard by the Emperor in hopes that they could be converted to the dark side. The
Eclipse II was mostly identical to its predecessor save for a handful of visual changes, and fulfilled the same purpose. It was later destroyed when an errant projectile from the destroyed Galaxy Gun, another superweapon developed under the returned Palpatine, fell onto the ship and caused a massive explosion that destroyed not only the ship and its accompanying fleet, but also the nearby Imperial citadel of
Byss. In Kevin J. Anderson's novel
Darksaber (1995), Death Star designer Bevel Lemelisk is recruited by the Hutts to build a superlaser weapon. Due to their refusal to sufficiently fund and supply the project, the resultant 'superweapon' is quickly destroyed by a combination of the tumultuous Hoth asteroid field in which it was built and the efforts of the New Republic. Lemelisk is captured and incarcerated by the Republic, and is later executed for his hand in the design and construction of Imperial superweapons. The novel
Children of the Jedi (1995) involves the return of
Eye of Palpatine, a "colossal, asteroid-shaped" super dreadnaught constructed at the behest of Emperor Palpatine during the second year of the Galactic Civil War. The Imperials lose control of the
Eye when a Jedi uses the Force to hijack the main computer with their spirits. ==Cultural influence==