Scientists Sending Laser Signals At NASA's LRO For Years, Receive One Back

Scientists have been firing lasers at NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) since it entered the moon’s orbit in 2009. To be specific, they were firing lasers at a small reflector array roughly the size of a paperback book, trying to bounce light back to Earth. Now after 10 years, they have finally succeeded.?

For the first time photons have been successfully reflected back to Earth from a lunar orbiter. It will give scientists a new way to perform measurements of and around the Moon, and can help them understand the conditions on the lunar surface that could be degrading instruments placed there over 50 years ago, reports Science Alert.?

JAXA/Britannica

When astronauts visited the moon, they left behind equipment for continued monitoring, such as seismometers and three laser reflectors.?

The Soviet space program also put reflectors up there on robotic rovers.?

Science Alert explains, ‘If you send a really powerful laser beam at the Moon and time how long it takes to bounce back, you can make a really accurate measurement of the distance between the two points, based on the speed of light. Thus, we can determine how far away the Moon is, with millimetre precision’.?

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NASA

With time, these measurements can help determine how the moon moves around, how it rotates, if there’s solid material in the fluid core; this is also how we know that the Moon is slowly moving away from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimetres (1.5 inches) per year.?

"Now that we've been collecting data for 50 years, we can see trends that we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise," planetary scientist, Erwan Mazarico. of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reportedly said.?

However, the amount of light returned from those lunar reflectors has dimmed, to as little as 10% of what it should be. The reason is not yet known.?

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ISRO

Here is where the LRO reflector comes in. If signals can be received bouncing off its reflector, scientists can compare the results from the surface reflectors. They may even determine the cause of surface reflectors' declining efficiency.?

Now we have to wait to see, what new discoveries scientists make about the moon from now on.

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