Prague Asterix Laser System-a new high power facility

The terawatt iodine laser system ASTERIX IV, which has been recently transferred from Germany to the Czech Republic, is presently being commissioned in a new user facility called PALS (Prague Asterix Laser System). The PALS facility is scheduled to provide its beam time to the international user community from early 2000. In this paper, the state-of-the-art of the PALS project is described and the major upgrades PALS will offer to its users are briefly discussed.