Smiling In Space

  • Released Thursday, July 25, 2013
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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.

NASA beams the Mona Lisa to a satellite orbiting the moon.

NASA beams the Mona Lisa to a satellite orbiting the moon.

Watch this narrated video to see how the famous portrait was beamed into space.

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

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.

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

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched into space on June 18, 2009.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched into space on June 18, 2009.

For More Information

See NASA.gov

Credits

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

This page was originally published on Thursday, July 25, 2013.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:51 PM EDT.