Like many Internet users, NASA seems to have succumbed to cat videos. But of course, after building one, the American agency took a short detour through space – about 30 million kilometers away.
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The operation was part of a very serious test of a new cutting-edge technology: a laser communications system that holds promise for the future of space exploration.
On Dec. 11, NASA used the system to transmit streaming video from space for the first time, it announced Monday.
The star of this 15-second video: a white and orange cat named Taters, owned by an employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Installed on a sofa, the cat tries to capture a point of light projected by a laser.
The high-resolution video took just 101 seconds to reach Earth after being sent from an instrument on NASA's Psyche spacecraft, which was about 30 million kilometers away at the time.
The transfer rate was a whopping 267 megabits per second, more than that of a traditional Internet connection.
The signal was received by the Palomar Observatory in California and transmitted live to JPL in the south of the same US state, where the video was played immediately.
“After we received the video at Palomar, it was sent over the Internet to JPL, and that connection was slower than the signal from space,” said Ryan Rogalin, who worked on the project at NASA.
This laser technology has already been used to transmit videos from space, but from much closer range.
Space missions require ever larger amounts of data to be transmitted as technology improves.
In particular, to prepare for sending manned missions to Mars, NASA is trying to use laser communication systems instead of traditional radio communication.
“Increasing our throughput is critical to achieving our future science and exploration goals,” NASA Associate Administrator Pam Melroy said in a statement.
The space agency also claimed to be part of a particular cat tradition: in 1928, an image of the cartoon character “Felix the Cat” was used for a television test.
But from space, Taters may remain the highest-sitting cat in history.