NASA Beams Mona Lisa to the Moon Because Lasers
Using a new kind of laser communication device, NASA transmitted an image of the Mona Lisa to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a 240,000 mile broadcast. Communicating from Earth across great distances in space can difficult because of signal loss and distortion by the atmosphere. Radio waves work pretty well, but lasers can serve as a backup and possibly carry even more information than previous methods. It isn’t faster, because the speed of light is the speed of light, but it has potential to be more useful.
Can you imagine a deep space network of space laser broadband? It’s like Star Trek!