The iconic image traveled nearly 240,000 miles in digital form from the Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) Station at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, to the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument on the spacecraft. By transmitting the image piggyback on laser pulses that are routinely sent to track LOLA's position, the team achieved simultaneous laser communication and tracking.
To learn more about how it happened, watch the video below!", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 347135, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11137/#media_group_347135", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "Learn more about beaming the Mona Lisa to LRO here!
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{ "name": "Michael Randazzo", "employer": "Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc." }, { "name": "Chris Smith", "employer": "HTSI" } ] }, { "role": "Narrator", "people": [ { "name": "Chris Smith", "employer": "HTSI" } ] }, { "role": "Producer", "people": [ { "name": "Chris Smith", "employer": "HTSI" } ] }, { "role": "Scientist", "people": [ { "name": "John Keller", "employer": "NASA/GSFC" }, { "name": "Richard Vondrak", "employer": "NASA/GSFC" }, { "name": "Xiaoli Sun", "employer": "NASA/GSFC" } ] }, { "role": "Writer", "people": [ { "name": "Chris Smith", "employer": "HTSI" } ] } ], "missions": [ "LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter)" ], "series": [ "LRO - Edited Features", "Narrated Movies" ], "tapes": [ "NASA Beams Mona Lisa to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Moon (Produced by: Brendan Antiochos)" ], "papers": [], "datasets": [], "nasa_science_categories": [ "Planets & Moons" ], "keywords": [ "communications", "Edited Feature", "HDTV", "Interview", "Laser", "Laser Ranging", "LOLA", "LRO", "Lunar", "Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter", "Music", "Narrated" ], "recommended_pages": [], "related": [ { "id": 11283, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11283/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Smiling In Space", "description": "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. || ", "release_date": "2013-07-25T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:59.085939-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 463522, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011283/covern-1024.jpg", "filename": "covern-1024.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "NASA beams the Mona Lisa to a satellite orbiting the moon.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }