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Cat Taters: Sent to Earth via laser
Photo: JPL-Caltech / NASA
Pet videos are social media hits. In some cases, millions of people view the videos. But compared to what the cat of a Nasa employee has now achieved, these successes seem small. A video of the animal was sent from space to Earth, over a distance of about 31 million kilometers, which corresponds to about 80 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
"Despite the distance, the video was able to transmit faster than most broadband internet connections," said Ryan Rogalin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), according to a release. After receiving the video on Earth, it was sent over the Internet to JPL in Southern California. "This connection was slower than the signal from space."
Taters chasing a laser pointer
The sender of the video was NASA's Psyche probe. She has been in space since October. "Psyche" is designed to study an asteroid and collect information about the formation of planets. It will be years before it achieves its actual goal. But the probe is not useless in time, as it now turns out.
NASA tested new laser communication with the action. Humans on Mars could one day use the technology to send complex scientific information, high-resolution images and videos back to Earth.
"Psyche doesn't generate video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data there," JPL Bill Klipstein said, according to the release. But to make this important event memorable, we decided to collaborate with the designers at JPL and create a fun video.«
The short, ultra-high-definition video shows an orange cat named Taters, an employee's pet, the company said. The cat does on the film what many cats do on videos: it chases after a laser pointer. For this purpose, various graphics are superimposed that illustrate features of the test run, such as the orbit of "Psyche".
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Ani