How NASA beamed the Mona Lisa to the Moon

Watch how lasers can communicate with satellites for future moon missions

Check out this cool video from the NASAexplorer YouTube channel, showing how scientists with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the spacecraft from Earth.


NASA says this was done as a demonstration of laser communication with a satellite at the moon, which could be used for future moon missions as a way to communicate rather than with radio waves. The image of the famous DaVinci painting traveled almost 240,000 miles in digital form, NASA says.

While it's likely they chose the Mona Lisa image because of its historical significance, I can't wonder if NASA scientists were poking a bit of fun at the Mona Lisa Moon alien conspiracy theorists out there.



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