Beam me up: Mona Lisa lasered to the moon

Mona Lisa and her famous smile have made it all the way to the moon.

An image of the iconic masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci was digitally beamed from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) which is circling the moon, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced this week.

“This is the first ever lunar laser communication demonstration,” said NASA scientist Xiaoli Sun in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“We chose a rather familiar image with lots of details – so you can tell if there are errors in the transmission,” he added.

The experiment was conducted in March 2012, but was only announced this week, Sun said, in order to complete a series of tests and allow time for a peer-review process.

At first, scientists found errors from the Earth’s atmosphere made the photo looked spotted and grainy, so they cleaned it up using the same techniques often used to clean signals on CDs and DVDs, and the final result looks remarkably close to the original, according to NASA.

Researchers said the new technology could eventually serve as a backup for radio communications to space and may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide.

“This experiment showed us we can also send simple commands,” said Sun.

“You can turn on a light, turn on an instrument, simple things like that. We haven’t done it yet but this demonstration shows it can be done.”