Wookieepedia:Featured article queue/May 28, 2010

The Tarkin was an Imperial superweapon modeled in principle after the first Death Star battlestation. The Tarkin combined the first Death Star's offensive capabilities in the form of a planet-destroying ionic cannon superlaser with a defensive shield generator and a set of engines. Designed by Imperial engineer Bevel Lemelisk, the original battlestation's designer, following the Death Star's destruction at the Battle of Yavin, and named in honor of the late Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, who died aboard the Death Star, the Tarkin served as a superlaser testbed for the construction of a second Death Star, built concurrently with the Tarkin. With technological refinements, the Tarkin improved upon the mistakes learned from the first Death Star, including the absence of the single design flaw&mdash;an exposed thermal exhaust port&mdash;that proved to be the original battlestation's undoing.

The Empire secretly began constructing the Tarkin in the Patriim system, above the garrison planet Hockaleg. In 3 ABY, following the Battle of Hoth, Imperial Grand Admiral Martio Batch requisitioned the Tarkin ' s destructive superlaser to smash the planet Aeten II, releasing millions of the planet's deeply buried stygium crystals into space, which Batch gathered to recreate the stygium screen cloaking device for his TIE Phantom development project.

Once learning of the Tarkin ' s existence shortly thereafter, the Rebel Alliance dispatched an elite commando team consisting of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, the Wookiee Chewbacca, and the droids C-3PO and R2-D2&mdash;the only Rebels to have been aboard the first Death Star and survived&mdash;to the Patriim system to infiltrate the Tarkin and destroy the superweapon from within before it could be completed. Despite the presence of the Dark Lord Darth Vader and a traitorous group of the superweapon's commanding officers, who sought to both kill Vader and stop the Rebel saboteurs, Organa drew upon a recollection of the original Death Star's technical schematics to rewire the Tarkin ' s superlaser firing mechanism to fire on itself. The Tarkin later self-destructed upon activation of the superlaser in an attempt to obliterate the Rebels as they fled from the battlestation.