Project Stardust

This article is about the research project. You may be looking for Wookieepedia's Project Stardust page.

"This station is now the ultimate power in the universe!"

Project Stardust,^[9] also known internally as the Death Star project,^[10] the Ultimate Weapon project,^[11] or as the battle station project,^[2] was the project that saw the construction of the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, known as the first Death Star. In 21 BBY, the Galactic Republic began secret construction on the Death Star on Geonosis, by order of Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine. After the Clone Wars ended and the Republic was reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, they moved the almost completed Death Star into the orbit of Scarif to finish the final adjustments and begin operations.

Description

Project Stardust was the codename for the Galactic Empire's effort to create the superweapon known as the Death Star.^[2] Although the project would not yield a completed weapon until the year 1 BBY,^[12]^[8] the original efforts began during the Clone Wars when the then Galactic Republic acquired designs for the battle station from the Confederacy of Independent Systems.^[1]

Ultimately, Project Stardust saw the creation of a superweapon capable of destroying entire planets. Although the first Death Star would be destroyed by the Alliance to Restore the Republic during the Battle of Yavin,^[8] the Empire developed a second Death Star that would also be destroyed at the Battle of Endor.^[13]

The name "Project Stardust" was a result of a key scientist, Doctor Galen Walton Erso, who called his daughter Jyn "stardust."^[4] Erso—who had been led to believe he was working as part of an energy program known as Project Celestial Power^[2]—would desert Project Stardust and the Empire completely so as to not see the superweapon completed, but was eventually hunted down and forced to return to Project Stardust.^[4]

History

Under the Republic

UltimateWeaponPlans-AOTC — Count Dooku holds the plans for the ultimate weapon given to him by Poggle the Lesser.

In 22 BBY, during the First Battle of Geonosis,^[12] Sith Lord Darth Tyranus was given the Death Star plans by the Geonosian leader Poggle the Lesser, designed by his weaponsmiths. He took the plans with him to Coruscant to give them to his Master Darth Sidious who was publicly known as the Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine of the Galactic Republic.^[1]

During the Clone Wars, Chancellor Palpatine set up the Death Star project secretly under the Republic, and only a handful of individuals knew about it. Members of both the Republic Special Weapons Group and the Strategic Advisory Cell were responsible for the project's advancement. Commander Orson Callan Krennic, a member of both organizations, was particularly determined to develop the superweapon to bring peace to the galaxy.^[2]

Jedi General Aayla Secura came close to discovering the plans when she infilitrated the Secret Research Facility on an unmapped moon but was stopped by Dark Acolyte Asajj Ventress who engaged Secura in a lightsaber duel and took back the plans.^[6]

Later during the Clone Wars, Sidious acquired a massive kyber crystal from the planet Utapau that he wanted to use for Project Stardust. The kyber crystal was, however, destroyed by Jedi Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, which necessitated the world's occupation so the hunt for similar crystals could continue.^[14]

During the Imperial Era

"What have we been doing here?"
"There's a stone. Something in the dirt here. They need it. It's the energy program. It's directly from the Emperor. It's something they can't do without. They need the planet."
"How long have you known this?"
'"We're going home, Syril. We're going home as heroes. This began long before we got here. They've been planning it for years. They're doing this no matter what."

―Syril Karn and Dedra Meero^[15]

After the end of the Clone Wars, the fall of the Republic, the destruction of the Jedi Order, and the rise of the first Galactic Empire, now-Galactic Emperor Palpatine continued Project Stardust. Construction began on Geonosis, although after three months of work, the Geonosians betrayed the Empire and began destroying what they built.^[2] However, the Empire relentlessly continued to funnel resources into ensuring Project Stardust's completion.^[7]

During or after 18 BBY,^[16] industrialist Cellia Moten, who fancied herself a close friend of the Emperor, began to suspect Palpatine was building a secret project after her informants in seven major companies passed her invoices made through shell companies for massive materials acquisitions. Moten recognized the pattern, having previously used some of those companies to build three of Palpatine's homes. Out of pure curiosity, Moten made it her mission to find out what the project was and why Palpatine didn't contract it to herself. Later, when the Imperial Security Bureau assigned Investigator Sendril Crane to investigate Moten's involvement in the disappearance of one of their agents while ostensibly aiding her request in tracking down the pirate Phee Genoa and Clone Force 99, who were in possession of a Caridan mortar she attempted to take from them, Crane discovered the mass graves on her estate. Moten threatened him with death to be her double agent, which Crane agreed to out of self-preservation and to ensure the success of his own personal mission to find his estranged daughter. While he was staying on her estate, Moten questioned if he or the ISB knew what Palpatine was building and his response confirmed it was a complete secret even from the ISB. Crane later contacted Investigator Olyen Brey for help in verifying Moten's findings. Colonel Wullf Yularen then replaced Brey as Crane's contact and ordered him to find out the names of the companies where Moten got her information.^[17]

Learning of Moten's inquires, Palpatine judged that she presented a massive risk to Project Stardust's secrecy. When Moten departed Dallow after forcibly hijacking Crane's mission to Tryth, the Empire destroyed her estate, as well as all the companies she got her information from, disguised as terrorist attacks. Darth Vader personally traveled to Tryth aboard the Star Destroyer Thrantha and boarded Moten's yacht while it was drifting in orbit after the damage it sustained from Clone Force 99 and their allies. After slaughtering her crew, he showed her a Galactic News Network broadcast detailing the purge of her corporate sources as well as a recording of the destruction of her estate. He then interrogated her on who else she might have told about Project Stardust before killing her.^[17]

Later, the research conducted for Project Necromancer by the Imperial cloning program was lost and its facility, Tantiss Base, was severely damaged while Chief Scientist Doctor Royce Hemlock and several stormtroopers of the Advanced Science Division died during an attack led by Clone Force 99. Believing Hemlock's failings had costed them enough, Krennic's rival Governor Wilhuff Tarkin ordered Captain Bragg to shutter Tantiss Base indefinitely and redistribute all funding and remaining assets to Project Stardust.^[18]

The key scientist to Project Stardust was a pacifist named Galen Walton Erso, who was led to believe his work was part of a program named Project Celestial Power. In learning the truth, Erso and his family would flee Coruscant^[2] in 17 BBY.^[12] With the work stalled in Erso's absence, Krennic finally tracked Erso down^[4] in 13 BBY^[12] and forced him back to working on the Death Star, killing his wife Lyra Erso during the struggle. Meanwhile, his daughter Jyn Erso escaped.^[4]

The Empire used prison labor to produce construction elements of the project. At a prison complex on Narkina 5, prisoners worked twelve-hour shifts building components^[19] used in the superlaser.^[20] By 5 BBY,^[21] a large portion of station was constructed.^[20] In 4 BBY, Krennic led a secret conference at the Maltheen Divide where Imperial experts planned a takeover of the planet Ghorman, needing its vast natural resources, specifically the mineral kalkite, in order to proceed with construction.^[22] The Empire's campaign of suppression on the planet culminated with the Ghorman Massacre in 2 BBY,^[12] where Imperial forces elaborately set up conditions to allow its forces to open fire on a crowd of demonstrators opposing the Imperial tyranny. The Empire then quickly began using its mining equipment to strip the planet.^[15]

During the final stages of the Lothal campaign, Krennic, now Director of the Imperial Weapons Division, persuaded the Imperial Security Bureau to divert the funding of Grand Admiral Thrawn's TIE/d "Defender" Multi-Role Starfighter program to Project Stardust until it was complete following the destruction of the Imperial Armory Complex on Lothal in 1 BBY.^[23]^[12]

The truth

"The Emperor's energy program is a lie—all of it. The Rebellion on Ghorman was a front from the start: a cover to strip-mine the planet for some mineral they need. They're not looking for partisans on Jedha; they need kyber crystals. The crackdowns. The public order. The labor camps. Scarif..."
"Fronting for what?"
"A weapon. Orson Krennic's been building a secret weapon for over a decade."

―Lonni Jung and Luthen Rael^[24]

The same year, ISB Supervisor Lonni Jung, secretly an agent of an undercover rebel network, accessed classified files and learned that the Energy Initiative was a front for the production of a secret weapon. Jung also learned that the Imperial oppression on Ghorman, a comparable crackdown on Jedha, and the presence on Scarif were all connected to the project, as was the engineer Galen Erso. Knowing his actions would be discovered and that his time undercover was at an end, Jung met with the rebel leader Luthen Rael to pass along the information. Rael decided to kill Jung rather than attempt to escape with him and quickly relayed the information to his assistant Kleya Marki. Although Rael would be captured by the ISB,^[25] leading to Marki ensuring Rael's death at the Lina Soh Hospital rather than allow him to be questioned,^[26] Marki would be extracted by rebel agents at a safehouse and later deliver the information to Alliance headquarters on Yavin 4.^[27] Although members of Alliance High Command doubted the information's legitimacy, more intelligence acquired directly after their meeting confirmed it. When Andor visited his contact in Gerrera's Partisans, Tivik, at the Ring of Kafrene, he confirmed that Erso was associated with a superweapon said to have the power to destroy planets.^[4]

Complete the Mission SWL — Jyn Erso stole the datacard containing Project Stardust from the Imperial vault on Scarif.

Shortly before the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance stole the Death Star plans, with the efforts of Rogue One. The plans were themselves codenamed Stardust, allowing Jyn Erso, who was recently recruited by the Rebel Alliance, to recognize and transmit them to the Alliance Fleet before she died. After the Battle of Scarif, the plans were sent to Princess Leia Organa aboard the Tantive IV.^[4] As the plans went to Tatooine inside the astromech droid R2-D2, they made it to the moon Yavin 4, where the rebels discovered a weakness in the form of an exhaust port, leading her older twin brother Jedi Lieutenant Luke Skywalker to bring an end to Project Stardust when he destroyed the Death Star and killed Governor Tarkin and most of the Empire’s elite forces.^[8]

Legacy

The First Order's Starkiller Base was inspired by and designed after the results of Project Stardust.^[28]^[29]

Behind the scenes

Project Stardust first appeared, albeit unidentified, in the 2002 film Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones.^[1] The project was later identified in the one-shot issue Darth Vader Annual 2, written by Chuck Wendig and published by Marvel Comics in 2018.^[9]