NASA Achieves Historic Milestone by Streaming Video of Cat from Deep Space

In a groundbreaking experiment, NASA has successfully streamed a high-definition video of a cat named Taters from deep space using laser communications. The video, which shows Taters chasing a red laser dot, was transmitted from nearly 19 million miles away on December 11th, marking a historic milestone for the space agency.

The experiment was conducted as part of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project, an ongoing effort to expand communications bandwidth in space and enable future human missions beyond Earth's orbit. The ultimate goal of the project is to stream very high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space.

The video of Taters was transmitted using an "ultra-high definition streaming video" as part of the DSOC experiment. It was beamed to Earth through a flight laser transceiver, an instrument that uses an encoded near-infrared laser. The laser beam was sent to the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in California.

Despite the tremendous distance, the video took only 101 seconds to reach Earth, faster than most broadband internet connections. The video was then downloaded at the observatory and sent “live” to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where it was played in real time.

The successful transmission of the video demonstrates NASA's commitment to advancing optical communications as a key element in meeting future data transmission needs. "Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.

The video of Taters was uploaded to NASA's Psyche asteroid probe before its launch in October. Although Taters did not actually travel to space, the video was transmitted from the probe as it continues its six-year, 2.2-billion-mile journey to a metal-rich asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The transmission distance of 19 million miles is about 80 times the distance between Earth and the moon. The successful transmission of the video sets a new record and paves the way for future communications capabilities from deep space. This could greatly benefit future space exploration missions, including potential human missions to Mars.

The video of Taters includes graphics such as "this is a test" and information about the laser's data bit rate and Taters' breed and heart rate. It also displays Psyche's orbital path and the Palomar telescope dome. The video was designed to capture the essence of the DSOC demo as part of the Psyche mission.

The DSOC team worked in collaboration with designers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's DesignLab to create the video. The inspiration for featuring a cat in the video came from Felix the Cat, who was featured in some of the first television test broadcast transmissions.

Overall, the successful transmission of the video of Taters marks a significant achievement for NASA's DSOC project. It not only demonstrates the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles but also opens up new possibilities for future interplanetary missions. With increased communication capabilities, NASA is one step closer to realizing its goals of exploring deep space and sending humans to Mars.