Reflecting on a first 🌚 #TBT At 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 12, 2023, NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) transmitted laser pulses toward a NASA retroreflector on ISRO’s (Indian Space Research Organisation) Vikram lander on the lunar surface. This marks the first time a laser beam was transmitted and reflected between an orbiting spacecraft and a tiny retroreflector aboard a lander on the Moon, a new technique to precisely locate targets on the Moon’s surface. Pictured here, at only 2 inches (5 cm) wide, NASAGoddard’s tiny but mighty Laser Retroreflector Array reflects light coming in from any direction back to its source. Retroreflectors have been in use at the Moon since the Apollo era. In the future, used in this new manner, retroreflectors could guide Artemis astronauts to the surface in the dark, for example, or mark the locations of spacecraft already on the surface, helping astronauts or uncrewed spacecraft land next to them. On Jan. 19, 2024, a NASA retroreflector flew ab...