Meow Meow – A cat video broadcast from outer space

Technique

It may not be like landing on the moon. But the US space agency NASA has now been able to send a video of a cat from space using laser technology.

The fifteen-second UHD video with Taters the cat (Taters is back home in California, not in space) was sent from the Psyche space probe, 31 million kilometers into space.

This is the distance equivalent to a trip between the Earth and the Moon 80 times.

Psyche heads to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to investigate an unknown object laden with metals.

It took 101 seconds

It took 101 seconds to send the video, at a speed of 287 Mbps. This is faster than many broadband connections on Earth.

Through the broadcast, NASA shows that it is possible to send broadband data millions of kilometers across space, something that may be a prerequisite for future space travel, for example when it comes to sending people to Mars. Laser technology can increase power by 10 to 100 times, according to NASA, compared to relying on traditional radio waves.

The transmission was made using a laser transmitter, and the signal was received by a telescope at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California. From there, it was sent over the Internet to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the state.

This online connection was actually slower than the signal coming from outer space, says Ryan Rogalin of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Role model Felix

The fact that the test was done using only a video of cats is a little play on people’s online habits, and of course to attract more attention to the whole thing.

But NASA was also inspired by the fact that American television in its youth in the 1920s used the cartoon cat Felix as a test image.

So what can be seen in the fifteen second video? Well, Taters is chasing laser lights on the couch, listing technical data charts for the space probe and flight.