NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has achieved yet another historic communications milestone! Less than a month after successfully firing its “first light” laser data transmission, the onboard Deep Space Optical Communications array’s flight laser transceiver sent an “ultra-high definition” video clip approximately 19 million miles back to Earth—a new record not just for transmission, but for cat videos, as well. This is amazing!
According to NASA’s December 18 announcement, Psyche sent an encoded near-infrared laser beam to Earth last week at its maximum bandwidth speed of 267 megabits per second (Mbps) while en route to the space probe’s final destination, a metal-heavy asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter. The team then sent each individual video frame over to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the clip played in real time. And it was all brought to us by a cat named Taters!
As NASA explains, the 15-second video clip’s main character is an ode to some of the very first television test broadcast transmissions. Starting in 1928, the test broadcasts included a tiny statue of the popular cartoon character, Felix the Cat. And on the subject of cats: Psyche’s brief scene showcases a sizable orange tabby named Taters. Can you imagine that, tumbling through microgravity after a red laser pointer across a couch?
Even across millions of miles of space, the demonstration reportedly holds up to some of the best internet download rates here on Earth.
Thanks to this and future Psyche laser system testing, NASA plans to ready astronauts’ communications arrays for longterm voyages to the moon and Mars.
“Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said in the agency’s December 18 announcement.
For now, however, Taters takes center stage. One can only wonder what the possibilities of the video transmission could be!
“Today, cat videos and memes are some of the most popular content online,” reads NASA’s announcement,
