Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii has yellow lasers for a guide star. The laser beam is some 30 cm thick high-power laser.

However you can see how the beam stops at about 100km altitude.

Official narrative is that there is a thick 'sodium layer' which blocks the beam (but does not block the Sun beams).

Well, there is no sodium layer that thick (it is an assumed vacuum). There is an elastic or solid physical layer that is some -270 Celsius cold (as shown by the telemetry of the GoPRo Rocket).

That layer is needed because the about 100 km in diameter Sun is not very far. We all know that Moon casts an umbra as small as 90 km in diameter, thus proving it is small - absolutely maximum 90 km, but could be smaller.

That very layer is the very reason all rockets need to turn horizontal already at about 20 km altitude (which really makes absolutely no sense at all, if the target is -- as they claim -- at over 200 km altitude).