Planets and Moons ID: 11283

Smiling In Space

Story by Kevin McLaughlin Released on July 25, 2013

The Mona Lisa is already one of the most famous paintings in the world, but it’s now being recognized for another reason: a digital version of it traveled 240,000 miles to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a NASA satellite orbiting the moon. A black and white image of the painting was divided into an array of pixels, and each pixel was converted into one of 4,096 shades of gray. The image piggybacked on signals already being used to track the satellite, enabling simultaneous tracking and communication. Different shades of gray were represented by delaying the transmission of each laser pulse by a precise amount of time. After correcting transmission errors caused by Earth’s atmosphere, the demonstration became one of the first successful examples of laser communication at planetary distances, a method capable of much higher data transmission than traditional radio signals. Watch the video to learn more.

The Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging station at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is routinely used to track LRO's position.

The image was transmitted pixel by pixel from the Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) station to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

For More Information

NASA.gov

Story Credits

Visualizers/Animators:
Chris Meaney (HTSI)
Chris Smith (HTSI)

Video Editors:
Michael Randazzo (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.)
Chris Smith (HTSI)

Narration:
Chris Smith (HTSI)

Narrator:
Chris Smith (HTSI)

Producer:
Chris Smith (HTSI)

Lead Scientists:
John Keller (NASA/GSFC)
Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC)
Xiaoli Sun (NASA/GSFC)

Lead Writer:
Kevin McLaughlin (LUSA Associates)

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11283

Keywords:
DLESE >> Narrated
SVS >> App
NASA Science >> Planets and Moons