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The Moon now has faster broadband speeds than most homes in Britain thanks to Nasa scientists - and a little help from Star Trek.

Space boffins were able to beam internet via a laser through their telescopes over the 384,633km distance at speeds of 19.44 megabits per second (mpbs), which is faster than the UK average speed of 18mpbs.

The laser is picked up on a satellite orbiting the Moon and focused into an optical fiber, before being converted back into data - which is similar to the scientific theory behind Star Trek's transporter, used to beam humans to different locations.

NASA scientists drew up plans for the hi-tech venture with help from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which means astronauts could catch up on box sets like Breaking Bad and Games of Thrones or even watch streaming Premiership Football.

Four separate telescopes were used from New Mexico to beam invisible signals of infrared light over to the lunar landscape - but teams also had to combat the problem of Earth's atmosphere bending the signals.

(Image: Getty)

Mark Stevens of MIT Lincoln Laboratory said: "Communicating at high data rates from Earth to the moon with laser beams is challenging because of the 400,000-kilometre distance spreading out the light beam.

"It's doubly difficult going through the atmosphere, because turbulence can bend light-causing rapid fading or dropouts of the signal at the receiver."

Earlier this week Nasa created a global selfie of planet Earth from 36,000 pictures.

Even a few celebrities got involved in the project, such as Family Guy voice actor Seth Green who joined in with a group selfie when he visited a Nasa laboratory.

A Nasa spokesperson said: "We asked people to answer the question on social media, with a selfie.

"The goal was to use each picture as a pixel in the creation of a 'Global Selfie' - a mosaic image that would look like Earth appeared from space on Earth Day."

You can see the global selfie by clicking here.