NASA used its Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging station at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to send the Mona Lisa signal to LRO. The team divided the famous da Vinci painting into sections measuring 150 by 200 pixels and then transmitted them via the pulsing of the laser to the orbiter at a data rate of about 300 bits per second.
Once the lunar orbiter received the image, it reconstructed the photo, corrected for distortions created as the laser signal zipped through Earth's atmosphere, and then sent the image back to Earth using its normal form of communication: radio waves.
"This pathfinding achievement sets the stage for the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration," Richard Vondrak, another researcher with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter said, "a high data rate laser-communication-demonstrations that will be a central feature of NASA's next moon mission, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust environment Explorer."
The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer is slated to launch toward the moon later this year and will focus on mapping the lunar atmosphere and environment.
-- By Miriam Kramer
This article originally appeared on Space.com.
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