NASA sent the Mona Lisa to the moon. Laser

NASA, with the help of lasers, sent a digitized version of one of the most famous paintings of mankind - “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci to the Moon. In fact, the reality is different from the scenario, where their use is due to NASA's desire to record a work of art on the lunar soil, which you probably wanted to hear, but it also looks great from a science fiction point of view.

Recently there, having covered a distance of approximately 240,000 miles (386,000 km) from Earth, they transmitted a digital image of the above picture to a lunar reconnaissance satellite ( Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ) than tested the possibility of operating lasers as communication tools in deep space.

Sending was made by scientists from the center of space flight to them. Goddard ( Goddard Space Flight Center ) through the laser pulses of the device NGSLR (Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging), which, as a rule, track spacecraft. Instead of radio waves, as with most other satellites, the Lunar Orbiter can also be monitored with a laser altimeter , which makes it an ideal test object for a remote laser message.
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Before the broadcast, the researchers converted the source into an array of 152x200 pixels. Each of them was translated to a shade of gray and was subsequently represented as a number between 0 and 4095. The completion of this, despite the delivery at the speed of light, occurred at a data rate comparable to 300 bps.

Interruptions occurred during the transmission, as the object received by the spacecraft due to the Earth’s atmosphere (referred to as turbulence) became rich in errors. The Reed-Solomon Code ( rus ), known for its use in a CD / DVD environment, helped scientists correct this flaw.

After loading the satellite via radio telemetry system sent a confirmation back to Earth. NASA also noted that this is the first step towards a full-fledged laser high-speed data transmission system, which they intend to use in the future of the lunar mission - LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Enviroment Explorer).

PS My first free-adapted translation.