1 minute read
A 15-second video of a cat named Taters was transmitted nearly 19 million miles by laser as NASA looks to ramp up its deep space communication capabilities.
To be honest, having a look at all this currently <gestures at world outside of window> it makes us think we need more cat videos in circulation, not less. And very kind of NASA to not only oblige but also set a whole new benchmark for deep space communication while doing so.
As NASA’s JPL relates, its Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beamed a UHD streaming video on December 11 from a record-setting 19 million miles away (31 million kilometers, or about 80 times the Earth-Moon distance).
The laser communications demo launched with NASA’s Psyche mission on Oct. 13, and is designed to transmit data from deep space at rates 10 to 100 times greater than the current radio frequency systems used by deep space missions today.
Uploaded before launch, the 15-second video features an orange tabby cat named Taters, the pet of a JPL employee, chasing a laser pointer, with overlayed graphics. The video was transmitted from the Psyche spacecraft via a flight laser transceiver, and took 101 seconds to reach Earth, sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267Mbps. The encoded near-infrared signal was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California, with each frame from the looping video then sent “live” to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the video was successfully played in real-time.
The demo doesn't end there, either. As Psyche travels to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter (where it will intercept what NASA hopes is the metal-rich asteroid of the same name in 2029) it will send high-data-rate signals as far out as the Red Planet’s greatest distance from Earth. In doing so, it paves the way for higher-data-rate communications capable of sending complex scientific information, high-definition imagery, and video “in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.”
All of which means there’s a good chance of more cat videos from space to come. Yay. We hope they uploaded lots of them to the craft…
Tags: Technology
Comments