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NASA ‘fired a laser’ at India’s lunar module – it was a science experiment

A NASA spacecraft has successfully directed a laser beam from the moon’s orbit to India’s Vikram module on the moon. This was a scientific experiment. The laser traveled about a hundred kilometers to the lunar surface and hit exactly the target, the size of which is only 5 cm.

The small, cookie-sized target was a retroreflector array placed on Vikram. The beam reflected off it was again “caught” by NASA. This method is usually used to find out the location of satellites. On the Moon, it worked to determine the localization of a stationary object.

According to the head of the mission Xiaoli San, now the specialists will have to improve the technique so that such a method will become common in future projects.

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