In a groundbreaking experiment, NASA successfully beamed an ultra-high definition video of a cat named Taters back to Earth from a distance of nearly 19 million miles, the space agency announced on Monday. The 15-second video transmission serves as a crucial test for NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications initiative, aiming to facilitate high-bandwidth video and data streaming from deep space, laying the foundation for future human missions beyond Earth’s orbit.
The cat in question, Taters, is not an actual space traveler; rather, it belongs to an employee at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The 15-second video clip, capturing Taters enthusiastically chasing the elusive red dot of a laser pointer, was uploaded to NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe, part of a $1.2 billion mission launched in October. The Psyche probe is en route to a rare, metal-rich asteroid, and the video experiment was conducted on December 11 during its journey.
While the primary objective was to demonstrate the transmission of broadband video over millions of miles, the creative decision to use a video of Taters added an entertaining touch to the technological milestone. Bill Klipstein, the project manager for the tech demo at JPL, explained, “Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data. But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”
The transmission was accomplished using a flight laser transceiver, which beamed the encoded near-infrared laser from Psyche to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. Remarkably, the transmission covered a record-setting distance, approximately 80 times the span between Earth and the moon, taking only 101 seconds for the laser signal to reach Earth.
Upon reaching Earth, the video was downloaded, and each frame was transmitted to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where it was played in real time. Despite the vast distance, the transmission speed outpaced most broadband internet connections. Ryan Rogalin, the project’s receiver electronics lead at JPL, noted, “After receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space.”
NASA hails this achievement as a “historic milestone” with implications for future space exploration. As Psyche proceeds toward the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, continuous high-data-rate signals will be sent back to Earth. This increased communication capability from deep space is seen as a significant step toward preparing for human missions to Mars.
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy emphasized the importance of this accomplishment, stating, “This accomplishment underscores our commitment to advancing optical communications as a key element to meeting our future data transmission needs. Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions.”
